


Angelic

by MHWK



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Canon, Awkwardness, Blood, Dark, F/M, Female Characters, Harm to Children, Hurt, Original Characters - Freeform, Sad, Sexual Inexperience, Slow Build, Torture, Trauma, Work In Progress, very slow build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-14 12:01:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 99,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1265773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MHWK/pseuds/MHWK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lark is the last of the Colt bloodline. Invisible and alone, she finds herself in the company of the archangel Gabriel, but it is with him that the secrets of the Colts lay. Where did the rest of the Colts go after Samuel Colt passed away, and why is Lark the last?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lark

Chapter 1: Lark

I can’t say I knew what to think when I got that call… 

Sam Winchester was on the other end of my phone that night as I pulled my 1985 Chevy Scottsdale into a rather unpleasant motel. There are places a hunter must stay to remain off the radar of local law enforcement. It’s also effective to drive a Series Ten, one ton metal monster that fits in around rural America as much as a cowboy hat and a pair of mud boots. Police don’t look twice. 

“Lark,” Sam said and the tone in his voice made my heart sink. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Now, I’ve always been used to the Winchesters apologizing. If it wasn’t “Sorry, Lark, I borrowed your revolver without your blessing and then lost it,” then it was, “Sorry Lark, we borrowed your truck because mine was smashed by an eighteen wheeler.” Sons of bitches… This time, however, I wasn’t so sure it was something I was going to be able to quickly get over. 

“It’s Gabriel,” he said.

I chuckled. I don’t know why. Usually, if it involved Gabriel, it was going to be a bad day anyway. I had had plenty of bad days since I had met that troublesome angel. That only made it worse. 

“What about him?” I asked as I pulled into a parking spot and made sure to set the emergency brake. I left it in first gear, in case my brake failed me. I didn’t want to be chasing my truck into oncoming traffic like I had the week before.

“He’s dead.” 

I laughed. “What?”

“Lucifer killed him, Lark. I’m sorry.”

I couldn’t move. 

“Lark?”

Taking a slow breath, I sat up straight in my seat and said, “Okay,” as calmly as I could. “Thanks for letting me know, Sam. You two be safe out there. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. You know… with Lucifer and all.”

Dean’s voice came through, he was shouting through the phone and I had to pull it away from my ear. “We’re going after the other Horsemen!” he said with all the bravery of a mad man. 

“I’ll keep an eye out,” I replied. 

“We’re pretty sure we might be looking at an outbreak of the Croatoan virus in the near future,” Sam said quickly.

“I’m settling in soon,” I told him. “You two worry about yourselves.”

“See you soon, Lark,” Sam said.

“See you soon, Sam,” I said and then added lightheartedly, “And tell Dean to find my damn revolver.”

“I have it!” Dean called out through the phone. “And you can have it back. It’s a piece of junk anyway!”

I sighed. “You tried to shoot the Devil with it, didn’t you?”

“How’d you know?” Dean asked.

“It’s my gun, genius,” I replied. “I know what it can and can’t kill. And if you’d asked me before you went all that way, I could’ve told you that. It probably works on everything except God and the Devil themselves!”

“Well how were we supposed to know?” Dean griped.

“By asking the owner of the damn gun!” I grumbled back.

“Your uncle never knew anything,” Dean muttered.

“Dean Winchester,” I said hotly, “you think you’re so funny!” 

“See you later, Lark,” he said and I could hear his smile in his words.

“See you, Dean,” I chuckled. 

It had always been like that. Almost as long as I had known them. I was a kid again around them. They brought out the best in me, the part of me that wanted to trust and love. They were my brothers. I wasn’t trying to replace the blood ones I had lost, that was the last thing I wanted, but there was a camaraderie there that I had with few others. Especially bloodthirsty hunters…

After I hung up, I dropped the phone on the seat beside me. Sam and Dean were the only two that knew about my secret affair with an angel. Mostly because they were the only ones that knew he was an angel. I didn’t want them to know how much I actually cared. I could never really cry about anything, and I didn’t want them to hear me sobbing at the end of the line. That was why Dean and I had laughed it off. End happy before I was left to myself. 

I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream and pound on the horn of my truck and road-rage my way to the next town with my foot mashed down on the accelerator. Even if it only topped out at eighty, if I was lucky. I had been meaning to fix that but I hadn’t gotten around to ordering the parts. Not to mention I didn’t see it as being necessary anymore with the coming apocalypse.

I hit the steering wheel once and the pain rattled up through my arm. I couldn’t afford to break anything, not myself, nor my  
truck, so I grabbed my phone and stuffed it into my pocket as I got out. In the passenger seat was my carry case, a duffel bag with necessities like shotguns, ammunition for a small army, my rifle, and my trusty semiautomatic that my father had given me when I was finally allowed to go on hunts. I had six generic grenades left and seven salt-incendiaries that my grandmother had taught me to make. Granted, she used black powder, and I used C4. How the times had changed…

Inside my hotel room, I took in the drab carpeting that was discolored in some places. Someone had tried to clean up spills on the repulsive red shag with commercial cleaners and botched it. Every bottle says to test a small area first. Apparently they couldn’t read. 

I groaned as I closed the door behind me. The cheapest room had two full-sized beds. It felt empty. I threw my bag on one bed and sat on the other. I needed to unpack. I needed to shower and slip my sawed-off under my pillow before I slept. I needed to sleep. 

There was no way I was going to sleep. 

Lucifer was loose. Who could sleep knowing Lucifer was loose? Gabriel could, if angels slept. I swear he never had a care in the world. Why would he? He could leave back to Heaven whenever he wanted. 

I opened my bag and took out a set of slightly worn clothes. The outer clothes never mattered. As long as my underwear was clean, I didn’t give a damn. Pistol and sawed-off in hand, I locked the door and went to the bathroom. I locked that door, too. I wasn’t about to be caught with my pants down with a bunch of demons entering the room. It had happened once before and it was not on my list of finer moments.

The water was as hot as I could get it, and steam filled the whole room. There are times when a cold shower is necessary, but for some reason, scalding water was something I could think through. Pain was something I could work with, something all hunters worked with, but I am the direct descendent of Samuel Colt. My job was always to grin and bear it, shut up and take it, and hunt the evil in the world. I was raised to be ruthless. I was raised knowing that a little collateral damage was okay if it benefited the greater good. The greater good. What a load of horse shit. 

My father would have been furious if he had seen me playing nice with the Winchesters. He would’ve blown a gasket when I adopted more of their beliefs than those he had thrust upon me. Every soul was worth something. It had to be. If not… What the hell was I trying to save? 

The hot water burned every inch of my skin. I tried not to think about Gabriel, but it was much too difficult. I found myself sitting in the tub with my knees drawn to my chest like a child. My head was quickly filling with memories that I wanted so desperately to go away. I couldn’t cry. I am a Colt. And Colts don’t sit in the bathtub and cry like a child. We step back into the world and get revenge. 

Revenge. On who? Lucifer? That was the quickest way to die. That was dingdong-ditch on Death’s doorstep. Unless you were actually ditching the Horseman’s doorstep. Close enough. 

I closed my eyes and heaved a long sigh. I was numb. I couldn’t feel the pain of the hot water any longer. It was always like that. My father had once told me someone could burn my skin off and I wouldn’t feel it. I had a scar on my lower back that had proved otherwise.

Shaking off my own unsettled feelings, I rose back to my feet and finished showering. I figured the heat was somehow slowly damaging all the nerve endings in my body and when I couldn’t feel it anymore, it was probably safe to get out soon. I never thought to actually change the temperature. Gabriel had always laughed at me about that. Not that that was one particular thing he laughed about. He laughed at me for everything. At first it made me angry. Then I realized the truth. He was just as broken as I was.

 

I first met him in Oregon. I had been following the tracks of what I had thought was a Trickster. Sam and Dean had warned me about the one they had encountered and efficiently stabbed through the chest. Finding the right wood for the stake was a bitch.  
I had tracked the strange occurrences into the woods. I was a smart one, going into the woods alone, but I had never been allowed the luxury of a fellow hunter to protect my back. I was only a little envious of the Winchesters. 

It was easy to play stupid. Naivete was always easy to project. When I walked into that forest, I had on a long black skirt with a pistol strapped to my inner thigh. That was the first thing my father had taught me to carry. Under my little jacket, I had my sawed-off packed with salt rounds. I had one of those professional cameras that nature observers used. It was old, but it was probably considered vintage. In my camera bag was my ammunition. I had checked myself in the mirror before I even stepped foot out of my truck. Nothing would have been the wiser. 

I was looking through the wide lens of my camera, taking pictures of random things and pretending I was professional about it, when I saw an old wooden building. If I was trying to lay low, I might have considered a place like that. I took a picture of it and then went to the broken windows and looked in. Nothing but shadows and spider webs. 

Finding the front door, I pulled it open. The hinges still worked. Everything looked exactly how I expected it to until I stepped across the threshold. Then it turned into Barnum and Bailey’s and I couldn’t help but stare. Being strictly raised as a hunter doesn’t prepare a person for an empty house turning literally into a big-tent circus. The kid in me that never got to be a kid was suddenly screaming “Circus!” in my head and I had to rein in my excitement at the sight of elephants and tigers. The more logical part of my head then beat my inner child into submission. This wasn’t real, whatever it was, but I didn’t let my surprise and my smile falter. Someone knew I was there. It was best to keep them from feeling threatened. I could play dumb.

I was wandering around the empty seats, my eyes fixed on the people and animals below. Someone could have killed me the moment I stepped through the door, when I was completely confused. But they didn’t. I was trying to watch my back and look completely preoccupied at the same time. It worked. Until a man appeared beside me. I reacted before I could think and I jumped away from him. I let myself trip over my own feet and fall to the seat beside me.

“I’m sorry I startled you,” he laughed and offered me his hand. 

He had a kind face, one that looked like he enjoyed laughing. I wondered if his laughter was often directed at the misfortune of others. I took his hand in mine and he pulled me to my feet. It was a warm hand.

“I’m sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I’m probably not supposed to be here, am I?” 

“I can look the other way,” he told me with one of those much-too-charming smiles. It was almost disarming.

Dumb people just accept everything at face value. There was no way I was ever going to ask how a circus showed up in an old shack in the Oregon woods. I was just accepting it. 

“Would you like to go down there?” he asked me.

I blurted, “Would I!” 

He held his hand out to me and I took it with all the outward trust of someone that was trying to get herself killed. I simply wasn’t sure how people could do that. Take someone’s hand and expect them to play nice. I wasn’t raised that way.  
Stepping up to the outside of the ring, I asked myself if this man beside me was the Trickster. He didn’t seem like any Trickster I had come across before. The silver ring I wore, spray-painted gold, had no effect on him either. I had the thought to test the stake I had hidden up my jacket sleeve, but thought better of it. I could play along a little longer. I wasn’t in a hurry to blow my cover. 

“Most people would ask a lot of questions,” he said and I turned to him grinning. 

“I’m not most people,” I told him. I let a little too much of my own personality slip through the character I was playing. I turned my own mischievous smirk into a flirty grin that I had copied from young lovers. 

For nearly an hour, I was petting tigers and elephants and this fun little capuchin monkey that sat on my shoulder and mimicked almost every movement I made. With approval, I took pictures. I really wondered if I would have pictures of the circus, or just pictures of the inside of a dilapidated wooden shack. 

He was watching me the whole time. As much as I was trying to figure him out, I was certain he was trying to do the same with me. 

Everything felt real. That was what I didn’t understand. My encounter with a true Trickster was easy to leave. It was mind over matter. An angry dog had just been a table. One thing was always something else. But the tigers felt real. The monkey on my shoulder had weight. A Trickster would have just been in my head. This was no Trickster.

The sudden thought that I had been playing with real tigers like they were kittens settled in my mind like a weight. I had been much too careless. 

Something must have shown on my face as I stared across that active circus, because the man then said, “Who are you?”

All eyes were on me. The tigers were growling at my back. The monkey had abandoned me. The tent was at a standstill and I was stuck in the middle. I turned to him and sighed, “The question isn’t who am I. It’s what are you?”

“You’re a hunter?” he almost seemed to laugh.

I wondered why it was so hard to believe. No one else had laughed at me like that before. I had my sawed-off aimed at his face and he only laughed harder. 

“That won’t kill me,” he said. “Man, you really walked in here with no idea of what you’re up against.”

“Should I have brought holy-fire?” I asked. 

He wasn’t smiling anymore. He didn’t look happy at all. 

The circus disappeared. We were suddenly standing high on a cliff, just the two of us. My back was to a long drop and a messy end. 

“Guess I won’t need this,” I muttered and pulled the stake from my sleeve. I then dropped it off the side of the cliff and whistled as gravity took it to the ground. 

He only stared at me, his eyes narrowed. This was the first time I had seen an angel in person. There had been stories passed down through generations of my family. And there could only be one thing that made illusion a reality like the circus. Tricksters just weren’t strong enough to alter reality like that. 

“I know when I’m outclassed, Angel,” I told him, my voice even. Every flirty aspect of me was gone. Now I was just a hunter in a bad disguise and he was looking right through me. 

“If you’ll excuse me,” I said as respectfully as I could. Then I walked past him. It was just a meatsuit with a friendly face. Poor guy probably wouldn’t survive if the angel left his body, if he was even still alive. There was no telling what kind of damage that soul had been through with all the stories I had heard about the Trickster I had been hunting.

I was less than four feet behind him when we were no longer on the cliff’s edge. Everything was dark. I stood very still and closed my eyes. I couldn’t see, so I tried to listen.

“You never answered my question,” I heard. It was still the angel’s voice. 

A light was switched on and I could feel the heat through my eyelids. I brought up my empty left hand and shielded my eyes before I opened them. I couldn’t see anything outside of my circle of light. It was blinding. I closed my eyes again and listened. He had put me in the spotlight. I wasn’t happy about it, but I wasn’t about to rise to his baiting.

“Aren’t you supposed to know things, Angel?” I asked calmly. Now I was baiting him. I couldn’t help it. From birth, everyone of the Colt line was branded with Enochian. Angels couldn’t find us. Demons couldn’t find us. We were born invisible, and we would die invisible. It was Samuel Colt’s Blessing. That was what the rest of us down the line called it. We didn’t know how it happened, but it showed up on the x-rays. It was always fun trying to explain that one to doctors. It was also probably the only thing that made both me and my father laugh together.

I could almost feel the darkness recede. His scare tactic wasn’t going to make me confess anything. I was raised in the dark. I was beaten bloody in the dark. It was daylight I feared. The dark was my cave, the place I lived and thrived. Daylight was where normal people carried on without a care. I didn’t belong in that world.

Feeling a cool breeze across my face, I opened my eyes to see the forest again. The shack was gone. I wondered if it had ever really been there at all. 

He was standing in front of me but I was looking past him, down the path I had walked to arrive in the company of an angel. He was watching me, but I didn’t dare look upon his face. He didn’t answer me and I knew he was being just as petty as I was. I didn’t need an answer from him, though. It wasn’t my place to question angels, and I didn’t have to answer to them either. 

I started walking away, with every intention of leaving when he blocked my way again.He appeared before me with that whoosh of wings that I would one day find incredibly annoying.

“You don’t exist,” he told me. 

“You know, you’re not the first to tell me that,” I said with a smile.

Being invisible was a blessing and a curse. We Colts have always been unable to hold down a job in civilized society, ever since the first of us. If we walked into a restaurant, we were overlooked. We are never truly seen. It’s lonely being an unknown face in the crowd. I believed he could see me because I walked into his reality. He just had no idea who I was. And he wouldn’t until I told him. 

It had almost been the same with the Winchesters, but they had shown up on a monster hunt that I was already on and it was chaos from the first moment we met. Only now do I dare to say that I consider them my friends.

The angel stared back at me and the look in his face almost made me speak. I knew the trick. He was trying to see into my mind and get my truths that way. It wouldn’t work. I smiled back at him with a dare. I could see his frustration. This was my first time pissing off an angel, and I was enjoying it more than I should have. 

He seemed to settle down where he stood. He let his annoyance visibly fall away and he only looked back at me with his charming smile. I was skeptical. “Don’t you belong in heaven?” I asked. “With the rest of them?”

“Heaven’s boring,” he told me. 

An angel that would rather hang out with humans. I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t about to trust a word out of his mouth. I didn’t trust anyone, why would an angel of the Lord be any different. 

“Who are you?” he asked again, this time softer. “I feel like I should know.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said as I walked around him. “As soon as I’m out of sight, you’ll forget all about me.”

The only reason Sam, Dean, and Bobby remembered me was because I had broken the wall. I had offered my name and a line of contact. To everyone else, I was a passing thought. 

I was walking back down the path to where I parked my truck when I felt my shoulders tense. I still had my sawed-off in my hand as I spun around and held it up. The angel was there, following me. He stopped in his tracks and said, “It still won’t work.”

“Might hurt enough to get you to go away,” I replied through clenched teeth.

“I don’t like puzzles.”

“Shouldn’t have pretended to be a Trickster,” I said. Then I asked, “Why are you following me?”

I wasn’t expecting the answer he gave me. 

“You’re alone,” he said. “No one should have to exist alone.”

I was alone. It really hadn’t sunk in until an angel told me. I knew I was by myself, and perhaps that was the same thing as being alone, but truly alone was another story. He was right. I existed alone in my invisible world. Had he seen that in me when he had turned out the lights? How comfortable I was in the dark, by myself. Most hunters were, but I was not most hunters. 

“What do you want?” I asked, lowering my shotgun.

“I want to know who you are,” he said. “I should know who you are.”

“You stop to think maybe God wanted me like this for a reason?” I asked him. “Because I have. And I think there’s a reason I shouldn’t answer that question.”

He looked back at me with this terrible sadness. He was laughing at me only moments ago for threatening him. Now he pitied me. I shot him. 

He looked down at the buckshot that riddled his stomach and said, “You’re buying me a new shirt.”

My shoulders dropped and I bowed my head. I couldn’t keep my shoulders from shaking.

“Are you laughing at me?” he asked

I couldn’t stop from laughing in his face. He had to ask and I couldn’t help myself. 

“You don’t get to laugh very often, do you?” he asked and I could hear his pitying tone. 

I wanted to shoot him again, but it wouldn’t do anything. He’d still be patronizing. I turned my back on him and began walking away. I didn’t feel him behind me, but I was sure he wasn’t about to leave me alone just yet. When I reached my truck, I went to the bed and put my camera and ammo-pack into the toolbox. The moment I opened the driver’s side door, I jumped back.

“So where are we going?” the angel asked as he looked back at me from the passenger side of the bench seat. 

“We,” I said as I got into the truck, “are not going anywhere together. Get out.”

“You can’t make me,” he said.

“You are such a child!” I shouted back.

He was grinning at me. I had taken the bait and let him get under my skin. At that moment, I understood it didn’t matter if I yelled at him or shot him in the face. He was going to still be sitting in my truck laughing at me. He was going to make my life more difficult than it already was, and I was perfectly willing to reciprocate. 

“Shut up,” I said as closed my door and put my key into the ignition. The pistol strapped to my thigh was making sitting uncomfortable. I reached up my skirt to pull it loose without a second thought to my company and then I set it and the sawed-off between us. 

“So that’s how guns are made,” he said and I stared at him.

I turned the key in the ignition and threw it into reverse, peeling out and throwing him into the dash. Angels were not meant to ride in vehicles. “Put your seatbelt on,” I said as I spun the wheel and put it into first gear.

 

That was how we had met. Dysfunctional. He was talkative and enjoyed my company. I was silent and despised him. I couldn’t get rid of the angel in my truck. People saw him. He wanted people to see him, and it drew attention to me. I realized what was happening when I was pulled over for speeding. I had never been pulled over for speeding. I didn’t know what to do. No one ever paid attention to my truck, ever. They couldn’t see me.

“Get out and scream about bees,” the angel told me.

“What?” I asked.

“Do it! Before he gets over here.”

Never trust an angel…

I did as he said. I jumped out of my truck and ran around swatting at the air shouting “Bees! Bees!” and then for extra measure, I jumped into the ditch. I wasn’t counting on the fact that it had recently rained and it was filled with a foot and a half of mud. 

Everything was quiet until I heard, “Ma’am? Are you here? I think the bees are gone!”

I pulled my head out of the mud and the poor officer screamed. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I would have tried to help, but I’m highly allergic.”

“Me too,” I said as I tried to climb out of the ditch. The officer offered his hand to help pull me out and I took it. I glanced back to my truck then and saw no one else in it. “Think they’re gone?” I asked.

“Hopefully,” he said to me. “You have a better day, Ma’am. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

I looked myself over and said, “What inconvenience?” and the two of us had an amicable chuckle. 

I went back to my truck and when I opened the door, the angel was there again. I didn’t look at him, but I could tell he was smiling again. I climbed inside and after I shut the door, he said, “How’s that non-existence going for you?”

I said nothing but put the truck into gear and maintained the speed limit to a gas station that had a shower area for the truckers. The angel came inside the store with me and I was noticed immediately and met with giggles and stares. I had to get rid of him.

After I showered and cleaned up, I went outside to my truck and he was sitting in the truck bed staring up at the stars like he had never seen them before. “You’ve gotta go,” I told him, breaking into his serenity like a wrecking ball. 

“It was just a little mud,” he replied. “You humans are so sensitive.”

“You don’t understand,” I told him. “I am invisible for a reason. You draw attention to me and put my life in danger. I won’t have that.”

He didn’t understand. I had yelled at him before but he wasn’t smiling back at me anymore. We had spent nearly two weeks together on the road and I had called him every name in the book, and he had only smiled. Everything was a joke to him. I slept in my truck and ate in my truck, and for two weeks I hadn’t found a single thing to hunt. It wasn’t normal. I could sneak up on anything and now it was like demons smelled their blood on my hands and took off running. It was an awful lot of blood. 

I knew the only way I would get rid of him. I trusted him enough to have him in my passenger seat. There was nothing he could do to me. Even if I left him at that truck stop, he would remember me, but he wouldn’t be able to find me.

“What’s your name, Angel?” I asked.

He smoothly leapt out of the back of my truck like he knew what was coming. He was going to cooperate. “I am Gabriel,” he said.

I stepped away from him. “Oh holy shit…” was all I could say. It wasn’t okay to yell at lower level angels, and it definitely wasn’t okay to yell at the archangel Gabriel. My blood froze in my veins. I was speechless. All of my bravado was gone. I was suddenly afraid. I hadn’t been acquainted with fear since I was a child. It was not a familiar feeling. 

“They were right,” I said softly, “We all go to Hell…”

He stared back at me with a question on his face that I didn’t want to answer. 

Trying to maintain some semblance of control in the situation I said, “I need a minute…”

I got into the truck and turned the key. When it roared to life I looked to the passenger side window and found him standing there, just looking back at me, waiting.

“Are you coming?” I asked and he got into the cab.

Before he could even close the door, I was leaving the parking lot. I was trying to keep my foot off the accelerator. I couldn’t be caught speeding again, I didn’t think the bees excuse was going to work twice. 

I had to get away from the town, on a back road where it was quiet and dark. I needed somewhere I could think. I found a bridge and parked my truck on the side of the road. Then I got out and started running. I ran down to the river below the bridge and stopped. 

I stood there listening to the water and slowly I could breathe again. Who the hell was I to open my mouth against an archangel? 

There was a Heaven. There were angels. There were demons. There was a Hell. These were things I had always known. But there was a difference between knowing and truly seeing. I was just a hunter thrown in the middle of everything. I had to get my head straight again… I wasn’t crazy after all. 

I heard footsteps and I glanced back to see the archangel Gabriel approaching me in his human meatsuit. Poor handsome meatsuit. He stopped at a distance from me. No pressure. 

I inhaled so deep that my chest hurt and then I turned to him. The dark was comforting. The stars were all the light I needed. I could see fine without fluorescents. 

“I apologize,” I tried to say amicably. “My name is Laura Skylark Colt. I am a descendent of Samuel Colt. Everyone… just calls me Lark.”

He stared back at me with an expression that betrayed his thoughts. “For the love of Dad…” he sighed heavily.

“What...?” I asked.

“I can’t kill you after all.”

“W--what?” I was starting to think not setting him on fire in the first place was a bad idea.

“You are the only person on the planet that knows I am here,” he said and shrugged. “You destroyed my very own witness protection program.”

“I… what?” was all I managed to say before I got angry. “You made people see me!” I shouted. 

“You’re only human,” he said, “You’ll live.”

Looking back on this conversation, I know now what he was doing. But at that time, I was furious. “You’re not even supposed to be here! This is my world. If you have no respect for my life, you have no business being here. Not to mention setting your ridiculous reality traps for idiots.”

“I caught you in it, didn’t I?”

I didn’t know what to say. All that came out was, “Asshole.”

He smiled again. He had a strange way of breaking the ice. 

“I have to get going,” I told him, a finality to my words. 

“You’re just leaving me here?” he asked, offended.

“You’re going to get me killed,” I said. “And I have no business hanging around with an angel pretending to be a Trickster. That’s painting a target on my back and I can’t have that.”

“You’re the last Colt of reproductive soundness. You can’t die until after you have a child,” he said plainly.

I couldn’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth. “And you can go screw yourself, because that is not happening.” Then I blurted, “Reproductive soundness? What the hell am I? A cow?” I glared back at him and then had to look away. I was getting angry. To some angels, I was sure all humans were cattle, just a lower being. 

I had a temper, like everyone in my family, but pointless anger had been beaten out of me as a child. It was a useless thing to have. I had never been angry like I was around the archangel. I was not bitter or petty, and here with an angel of the Lord, I could have burned him in holy-fire and been happy to dance on his ashes. I didn’t like being angry. It blurred my thoughts.

“I have to go,” I said softly. “I have a job to do.”

“Let someone else handle it,” he shrugged.

“I am the someone else,” I replied sharply. “Angels don’t take care of us poor humans. We have to do it ourselves.”

“What a burden,” he sighed.

I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. I could hardly ever tell.

“So you let yourself be pushed into an outcast society, alone, so you can be the hero?” he asked me.

“I am alone because of the Enochian on my bones; the spell on my family put in place by God or some angel that banished my family to solitude,” I spat. 

“You blame God?” he asked.

“No,” I replied with a shake of my head. “I always figured someone had a plan for me. And this was it. I don’t wish my fate on anyone, and that is why I do what I do. Not to be a hero, but it’s all I know. And the people in this world would fall to pieces if they knew what blood felt like on their hands. Let them think they can still question the existence of God and demons.” 

I was going to leave an angel under a bridge in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t have him with me. 

“I don’t know how to live like a normal person, Gabriel,” I said softly. “I was born to be alone. Please don’t follow me anymore. I have a job to do.” 

He watched me go. I left him there standing at a riverbank beneath the stars. He would be fine. He made for a charming human. 

 

On my own again, I reveled in the quiet. It was just my music, that Gabriel had criticized, and the sound of my truck. I could speed and never be noticed. I walked into stores and no one saw me. People forgot me moments after speaking to me, like the cashier. I was very much alone. 

Hunting came easy. Every night was another demon. I fell back into my routine of demons, blood, and everything else that was strange in the night. I had existed for only a moment in Gabriel’s eyes, and then I was gone. I was numb to the world. I lived in my head. There was no anger or hate. I felt nothing.

It wasn’t until I realized I had lost something that I understood I never had anything. I had a name I wasn’t allowed to share and a life that wasn’t my own. I was a Colt, and I had a legacy to uphold. That was my reason for existence. I wasn’t human. I was just a place-marker in history. Gabriel had said I was just alive to reproduce. 

I slammed on my brakes in the middle of a deserted highway. That couldn’t be it. I had a life for a reason. My destiny was my own… wasn’t it?

I was gripping the steering wheel so tight that my knuckles were pale. My hands shook. I was nothing. I had to accept that again. I was a Colt, and we were hunters. That was all. 

I had let the Trickster trick me into thinking I was more. I wasn’t. I was alone, and that was how it had to be. That was how I needed it to be. That was my normal. The angel could stare at the stars and dream, but I had no dreams. Colts were not allowed to dream. What ifs were never allowed to enter my mind. 

Briefly, I wondered if this was an identity crisis. It felt like one. I needed to shut down my brain and let it go. I took human emotions and dropped them off the cliff like I did to the stake that was meant for a false Trickster. If my father had still been alive, he would have done it for me. I was being nice to myself.

I took a deep breath and restarted my truck. It had stalled out when I took it to a complete stop without downshifting. As I headed down the road again, I turned off my phone. God had meant for me to be alone. I didn’t need anyone telling me I could live a normal life. I didn’t want one. 

 

On a moonless night, as I sat in the bed of my truck and ate a tasteless sandwich from a gas station refrigerator, I found myself staring up at the stars. I wished that night that I had a dog. Sam had Dean, it was the same thing. I chuckled after the thought and shook my head. The poor dog would be a liability. If I happened to be seen by anyone, demons would attack my dog just to get to me. 

Maybe a goldfish… I could glue a fishbowl to my dashboard. 

When I had left the Winchesters, I had not felt like this. I had been happy to return to my solitude. Perhaps it was because Gabriel had made others see me as well. The Winchesters shared my world, and then they departed. The archangel had pulled me into existence, a place I had never been before. What was it to truly exist? 

I grumbled to myself and threw the uneaten half of my sandwich out the back of my truck. I had lost my appetite. Hugging my sawed-off, I climbed into my cab, locked the doors, and slept out in the middle of nowhere.


	2. Gabriel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From Gabriel's point of view as he tries to make sense of Lark Colt.

Chapter 2: Gabriel

Lark Colt… I never would have hurt her. Ever. From the moment I heard her name, I knew exactly who she was. I read her lineage on her face. I saw the resemblance in the way she stood. I could taste her ruthlessness and smell the demon’s blood on her skin like a lingering memory. She was one of the fearless Colts.

Like all humans, I could read who she was, but the Enochian carved into her bones prevented me from seeing who she had been, where she had been, and where she was going. That was the way I had made that spell for Samuel Colt; to protect his family. Generations later, this was what had happened. One last Colt to preserve the legacy, and she dwelled outside of the civilization she protected, away from the people she needed to be a part of to create an heir to the Colt line.

I alone had sought to protect the Colts, and instead I had doomed them to darkness and solitude. They, she, walked around like a soldier instead of a hunter. 

In the two weeks I had traveled with her, waiting to hear her name, I asked questions that she never answered. I told her stories that she didn’t care about. And she acted as if I wasn’t there. During the day, her hands were on the steering wheel, and at night, she slept in the cab of her truck with the doors locked as she cradled her sawed-off shotgun like a teddy bear.

I didn’t understand what had happened. When she finally did speak to me, it was in every rough tone imaginable. She didn’t want me there. Even knowing I was an angel, she had made it clear that her passenger seat was no place for me.

It wasn’t until sometime in the second week that a song came on the radio and she started singing. I wasn’t paying attention to the words, but she was. All I could make of it was an Irishman singing about getting drunk and not sinking a boat.

“You listen to this?” I asked when it was over. It was the first time she had even played any music around me and she promptly turned it off. Her personality had shown a little and just as quickly she had put it away, as if it belonged in a box. It wasn’t a human characteristic. 

“I meant,” I said, “It was unexpected. Every hunter I’ve come across is either your classic rock or mainstream.” I reached forward and turned the radio back on and she stared at me. Something said she had killed for less.

She let the CD play for the rest of the day, only touching it to skip one song. By the fourth pass, I was singing Float, and she was, too. 

And then I saw the police lights in the mirror. Her first response was to swear, “What the fuck?” then she pulled over. She hadn’t noticed how people had been able to see her. People glanced her way at gas stations. The cashiers watched her leave the store instead of immediately forgetting she was ever there. When the siren caught her attention, there was realization on her face. She had never been pulled over before.

Jokingly, I suggested, “Get out and scream about bees!” I had seen one too many movies.

“What?” she said and looked at me with panic.

I felt a bit of guilt by telling her, “Do it before he gets over here.”

I wasn’t expecting the very serious hunter to do as I said, but she did. I took leave of the cab so that the officer wouldn’t see me, nor would he hear me laugh when she dove into the ditch. 

She wasn’t smiling when she saw me again. She was covered almost head to toe in mud as she climbed back into the cab. Again, she was not happy with me. 

When we arrived at a truck stop, she was seen again, and this time she seemed to find the stares and smirks humiliating. She left me without a word and I returned to her truck. The sky was dark, and as I sat in the back of her truck, I couldn’t help but look up to Heaven. I was nostalgic, only for home, not for many of those who were there. The Human realm was my home. There was just too much here to leave.

I lost track of time. Time. It’s never been anything for me. And for a moment I was caught in my thoughts. 

“You’ve got to go,” I heard and turned to see her staring back at me with what I can only describe as fear and determination. She hid her anxiety under a carefully constructed mask of annoyed indifference. She was going to do whatever she had to do to get rid of me. She was no longer completely invisible. I was seen, and she was seen with me. 

She seemed to steady herself, her fists clenched tightly. “What’s your name, Angel?” She asked me. Being called Angel was the least of my favorite names she had called me, but it was the one she used the most. She occasionally got more creative with Birdbrain, Featherhead, Goody-Two-Shoes, Loki, and my favorite, Hey You.

I left the truck and stood before her. I was tempted to give her a false name, but I knew if I wanted her name, I was going to have to give her mine. I merely said, “I am Gabriel,” but someone would have thought I had told her I killed her mother.

Her eyes grew wide and I could almost hear her heart leap out of her chest. There was true panic in her face and it was clear she didn’t know what to do with it. She moved as if she were lost, unsure of where to go, until she got back into her truck. 

All she had said was she needed a moment to think, and then I was back in the truck and we were speeding down the road, out into the night and far away from the lights of human civilization. The stars were brighter. The night was darker.

Pulling off the road at a bridge, she barely turned off the truck before she got out and ran away. I was left sitting in the cab, in the dark. For a moment I watched her stand down at the river’s edge. This was her comfort, away from everyone and everything. Her dark solitude. 

I could see her starting to come back after the shock of discovering I was an archangel, and I left the truck to meet her at the riverbank. 

Laura Skylark Colt. I couldn’t believe she was a Colt. It made sense, but my own spell had kept me from seeing her. I saw her then. All the way back to my friend Samuel Colt. She was the last of her family that could produce an heir. If she died before that, the Colt family would be gone. This could not happen. I must have chosen my words poorly, for Lark reacted as if I told her she had to cut her hand off.

She blamed the spell I had put on her for her distance to the other humans she shared her world with. I wanted to tell her it was me, and that I was sorry for the harm I had done in turning her and her family into the invisible Colts. Before I could say anything, she left, and asked me not to follow her any longer. 

Lark Colt wanted her solitude more than someone to end her loneliness. I wondered briefly if she even knew how alone she was. 

I moved on. There was trouble to stir up somewhere. Lark and the Colts were not far from my mind wherever I went. I wanted to know what had happened. More than anything, I wanted to know what had happened to the Colts I had called my friends, what had happened to the family I had said I would protect.

I had to find Lark, but she would have to come to me. And to get any answers, I was almost certain I would have to make her angry. When she yelled, she spoke. When she was calm, there was no reason to speak. I was certain she would rethink her decision to not use holy-fire on me before.

I knew I had to tread carefully, not to draw attention to myself as anything other than a pagan god. Lark was the only one to know the truth of my existence on Earth, and I was hoping she had the sense to keep it to herself. I also knew I had to act quick. She was attached to her truck and would drive in her sleep if she could. Every moment I waited, she was driving miles and miles further away. I had no idea of which direction she was even going. I had been tricked by my own spell… It must have been what the humans called Karma.

 

I went to a small town, about six thousand people, and I gave them everything they ever wanted. If it didn’t draw Lark, then it would at least cause enough chaos that she would have to notice. Eventually, she would show.

I took on the face of another man and sat on a bench outside a convenience store to watch. People were easy to please. Love, money. Sometimes the two were the same. They all believed it equated to happiness. Everyone wanted something, anything. 

As people cheered and threw money about, and some of them started working on the rest of their lives, I watched it turn bad. Those who had wanted something other than money began to feel cheated. There was a lesson in all of this. Perhaps it was watch what you pray for.

On the third day, as I sat waiting on my bench, the old, gray Chevy Scottsdale pulled into town. It sounded like a monster as it came to a stop on the other side of the street. 

Lark stepped out of the cab and looked around with a void expression on her face. If I hadn’t known who she was, I would have thought she was a local just trying to buy groceries.

Crossing the road, she was stopped by a slightly younger man that loudly proclaimed, “I want you to marry me.” That was something I didn’t understand. She was pretty, but not love-at-first-sight pretty. Aside from her long red hair and her feminine-build she didn’t look much like a woman in her layered clothes. She just looked like a hunter. 

To her credit, she looked back at the man and said, “You’re in my way.”

He appeared mystified, unsure why the spell that had given everyone what they wanted wouldn’t give him a pretty girl. Disheartened, he walked away. Lark however, stood in the middle of the road and shouted, “Alright, Loki! What’re you playing at?”

I had forgotten how quick the Colts were. I let the world around her come to a halt, and she spun about, looking from one still person to another. Then she looked at me. I hadn’t moved at all, but it was almost as if she could tell I was the only threat. 

Standing, I changed back to the face and body that she knew, my vessel. Lark’s hardened gaze lessened at the sight of me, but she still didn’t seemed pleased.

“What?” she asked abruptly.

“If you’d left me a phone number, I could’ve just called you,” I said.

“You have a cell phone?” she asked with a skeptical look.

“How else do you think I keep in touch with all the other pagan gods on holidays?” I asked.

Her brows furrowed and she asked, “You’ve got my attention. Now what do you want?”

“I have questions,” I said, “about what happened to your family.”

“No,” she told me straight forward. I wondered if she had been humoring me before by letting me ride in the truck with her. Now she knew she could tell me no. 

I had to know. I made her an offer. “I can give you anything you want. Everything you’ve always wanted,” I bargained.

Immediately she turned it back on me. “Like you did for them?” she said and pointed to the people around her. 

“It wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” I asked as I approached. “A normal life. Family. You wouldn’t have to be a hunter.” I was going to have to push harder.

“Thank you for telling me what I want,” she said sarcastically, “since you know everything about me. Please, why don’t you make lifelong decisions for me as well?”

I wasn’t sure if she was looking for a fight or this was just how she was, but I made the decision to take her sarcasm and use it. She held her ground as I approached her. Before she could say anything, I touched her forehead and she fell unconscious. 

I took her to a new reality where it was as close to the typical American dream as I could get it and I placed her into the soft sheets of a large bed. Before I left her, I gave her a long nightgown instead of her hunter clothes. 

She didn’t look out of place. A home with a white picket fence, the sun shining through the balcony window, I could see her living comfortably in this place, even if it was a dream. As I stood there, I found myself daydreaming. I could see myself there, too. 

Slowly, Lark began to wake. She stirred and rolled over on her side. Nothing else had moved in the room, but she knew this was not the cab of her truck. In an instant, she saw me, bolted out of the bed, and struck the wall with her back. The shelves above her shook and fell from their anchors and decorative ceramics came down on her head and shoulders and shattered on the floor.

She had tried to protect her head, but when she looked at her hand, it was covered in blood. Her eyes went down to the delicate nightgown I had chosen for her and she nearly screamed. It was a terrified, strangled cry that brought me to action. I rushed across the room to tell her I could fix it; the clothes, the blood, everything.

Her gaze went to me and the panic I had seen before in her was nothing compared to the pleading helplessness she gave me then. 

“Stop,” she whimpered. There was no strength in her voice. “Please stop. Let me go,” she said. “You don’t want me. I’m nothing. Please let me go.” 

Lark fell to her knees and dropped her head to the pale carpet. She wouldn’t look at me. She shook violently. But she didn’t cry. 

I took everything away. I put her back on the street in her own clothes. I put the town back the way it was and let everything go. I kept my distance when she came to, standing out on the street with everyone walking by like any other day. 

I had panicked. I could have wiped it from her mind like it had never happened, but I didn’t know what to do. She had broken to pieces. 

What had I done?

Whether she thought it was a dream or not, she composed herself with that void mask and returned to her truck. She was gone. She would remember. And I was sure I would not get another chance to speak with her again. How could I apologize for that? 

I had pushed her too far.


	3. Lark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lark and Gabriel come together on a common mission. Unfortunately, the road leads toward Crowley.

Chapter 3: Lark

 

As calmly as possible, I ran for my life. There was something wrong with that archangel Gabriel. He had taken his playing Trickster to heart. I didn’t know what he had been getting at. He had questions for me that I didn’t want to answer. Had he been planning to take them out of me by force? I considered myself blessed that he let me go. I could have stopped that man on the street from touching me, but I couldn’t have stopped an archangel from getting what he wanted.

I had gone to that town with only the intentions of putting the trouble to an end. The Colts are hunters, not heroes. If people get saved along the way, then that was good, but that was never the priority. It was never my top priority to be a savior.

I drove all night. I wasn’t sure where I was even going, but something told me to keep moving. If I stopped, everything would catch up to me and I didn’t want that. The past was supposed to stay buried in the past, not rear its head in memory.

Somehow, I ended up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, sitting in my truck across the street from a salvage yard. This was the last place I wanted to be, but I didn’t know where else to go. I had been sitting in my truck for a little over an hour in the late evening when my phone rang in my glove box. I jumped. It never rang. Who would be calling the invisible Colt?

Reaching over, I pulled the little flip phone out and answered it. I didn’t even look at the number that was calling. If they had mine, it was enough to answer. I didn’t put any contacts into it. “Hello?” I said unsure.

A gruff voice on the other end said, “You just going to sit out there all night or are you coming in?”

“I—” I choked. “In,” was all I managed to say.

I dropped my phone back into my glove box and stepped out of my truck with my sawed-off in hand. I had ended up on Bobby Singer’s doorstep, but it didn’t mean I wanted to be there, or that I trusted the man waiting inside the house.

As I stepped up to the door, he opened it like he had been waiting for me to get there. I was startled, and I aimed my sawed-off at his face.

“Easy,” he said softly. “My mistake.” He stepped away from me very slowly, as if I was some wild animal he couldn’t turn his back to. I didn’t blame him.

I was hesitant to walk through the door, but I did. He was too far away to close the door behind me, so I held out my hand and closed it for him. He seemed to relax a little then.

“How are you, Laura?” he asked me. I wasn’t used to hearing my first name. Everyone did call me Lark, even my own family when they were around. Bobby was the only one that had elected to call me Laura. I wasn’t sure if I liked it, but I let it go.

“I…” I couldn’t get a sentence to form. I was more shaken up than I thought I was.

Bobby noticed and said, “Look, I’ve got dinner on, you’re welcome to stay as long as you need to.” And then he left me to go to the kitchen.

I was standing just inside the door and had never felt so comfortable in my life. Bobby gave me my space. He wanted nothing from me, he never had. He offered what he could, and I never felt threatened in his presence.

Slowly, I followed him into the kitchen. I was hungry. I couldn’t remember eating recently, and the smell of whatever he was cooking made me sit down at the table. I put my sawed-off on the table beside me and he never said a word. I wouldn’t shoot Bobby if I didn’t have to. I was almost certain I wouldn’t have to.

“I always make a little extra,” he told me as he set a bowl in front of me. “Never know who’s going to show up.” Then he sat as far away from me as he could.

As I set my spoon into whatever it was before me, I waited for it to cool and thought hard about my next question. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know Bobby’s answer.

“What…” I began slowly and I gained his attention. “Bobby,” I started again, “what do you know about me?”

There had to be a reason he was so cautious. He had to know something. Even when I had first met him, he had always regarded me with amicable distance. At first, he wouldn’t even look me in the eye.

“You’re a Colt,” he told me plainly. “You’re a good kid from a really messed up family. You can’t blame yourself for the way things ended up, Laura. Not everyone is going to hurt you like they did.”

I dropped my spoon back into my bowl and stared at him.

“I knew your uncle,” he told me, “very briefly.”

I was the only one that didn’t seem to know him.

“If you have any clothes that need to be washed, you can help yourself to the laundry room.” He then looked at me and saw my almost confused expression and added, “Or you can leave them in a pile and I’ll do them tonight.”

“Thanks Bobby,” I said softly.

“You can take the second floor,” he told me. “I won’t step foot up there for any reason while you’re here.”

We ate in silence. That was another thing I liked about Bobby. He didn’t care if I never said a word, he wouldn’t force me to.

When I was done, I returned to my truck to retrieve any and all clothes I had stored in there. It wasn’t a large pile that I brought back into the house, but Bobby had another concern as I dropped them to the floor.

He picked up one of my shirts and asked, “Do they all look like this?”

I nodded. The fabric was thin and more than well worn.

“I don’t know if it’s going to survive the washing machine,” he told me. Then, he said, “If they don’t, I’m sure I have a few things around here you can take with you. They aren’t pretty but, hell, I don’t think any of us do pretty anymore.”

I never had to do pretty. No one ever saw me. Until lately, and it was still bothering me.

I had nothing else to do downstairs, and Bobby was busy with my laundry, so I retired to the second floor. There was a guest bed made and I sat on it for a moment, contemplating whether or not to remove my boots. I laid back on the bed and was struck immediately with the memory of waking up in the Trickster’s world.

I cried out and Bobby’s voice echoed up the stairs from the floor below. “Laura?” he shouted to me. “Are you okay?”

“Y—” my voice broke. “Yes!” I called back. Then there was silence. All he need to know was that I was fine, and then he left me alone again.

I took my sawed-off in my hands and left the bed. I couldn’t sleep on it. I couldn’t even lay down on it. I looked about the sparse room and decided the only place I might feel comfortable was under the bed. That was where I slept.

I didn’t need a pillow or a blanket. I hadn’t had either one in years.

Bobby’s house was quiet. It was the perfect place to fade back into non-existence. I watched the door until my eyes finally closed. It wasn’t the best sleep, but it was a better one than I had had in a long time. I felt spoiled.

The sound of voices downstairs brought me awake. I knew them. Sam and Dean were here. Bobby hadn’t been kidding about people showing up. Peeking out from under the bed, I found the early morning sun trying to peek over the horizon. I had slept longer than I had intended to. It hadn’t even felt very long. I was still tired.

As I pushed myself out from under the bed, the boards squeaked beneath me and I paused. Downstairs, the voices stopped speaking. Then I heard Bobby say, “Hey, get your ass back here. It’s Laura.”

“Laura?” I heard Sam ask. “Laura Colt?”

“Lark’s here?” Dean asked.

I moved to the door and headed toward the stairs. When I could see the Winchesters, Dean said, “Hey, you are here. ‘Morning.” It was such an amicable greeting that I didn’t know what to say.

“Still got that sawed-off glued to your hand, I see,” Sam said and I looked down at the shotgun in my hand and then back to him blankly.

“Sorry, Laura,” Bobby said to me, “I tried to keep them quiet so you could sleep.”

That kind of consideration was new for me. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to react. I managed a shrug and descended the stairs.

“Leaving already?” Dean asked.

Bobby warned him, “Dean, Sam, kitchen. Now.”

There was a sound in his voice that made me step back and grip my shotgun a little tighter. He then herded the Winchester boys out of the room and I made my way down the stairs. The fireplace was empty in Bobby’s study, but there were books strewn around and I couldn’t help but gaze upon them. I was never an avid reader. With time I could piece the words together, but aside from everyday occurrences, I had never had to read. It was a luxury that I had never been afforded.

I sat on the floor before the dark fireplace and set my shotgun beside me. I wasn’t planning on leaving just yet unless Bobby wanted me gone. But I did want my clothes. A shower was a nice thought, too.

When the three returned to the room, Bobby took his seat behind his desk to look through books and Sam and Dean remained standing, and very quiet. I wondered what Bobby had told them.

“Just a second,” Bobby mumbled as he looked through a few books. He looked tired. Had he been up all night?

I glanced over to the Winchester boys and Sam caught me looking at him. Cautiously, he asked, “How’d that… thing go? That you thought was a Trickster?”

Hunting I could talk about. “Not a Trickster,” I replied. “Can’t really say what the hell it was. But it wasn’t a Trickster.”

“Yeah?” Dean asked. “Any ideas?”

“Stronger than a Trickster, but no. I’ve got nothing.” I wasn’t a fan of lying, but it wasn’t my place to speak of the archangel. His business was none of mine, and I didn’t want it to be any of mine, either.

“You don’t seem the type to back down,” Dean commented and Bobby gave him a stern look.

“Dying isn’t on my list of things to do this month,” I said. Month. I didn’t even know what month it was. What day was it? Tuesday? I honestly didn’t even know when my birthday was. We never celebrated them, nor any holidays. Maybe dying was on my list of things this month, if I kept a list…

“So you didn’t kill it?” Dean asked.

I shrugged. “Not this time,” I said.

Bobby paused and asked, “You let it get away?”

“I don’t exactly have a personal paranormal encyclopedia in my truck,” I replied.

“She’s calling you an encyclopedia,” Dean said to Bobby. He smiled childishly.

I hadn’t known the Winchesters and Bobby very long, less than a year, but I would have preferred them to my own family.

“Tell me about the Trickster you faced,” I asked the brothers.

“Uh,” Sam began unsure. “Well, it was on a college campus, and weird things were happening.”

“Like a big-tent circus inside of a shack in the middle of the woods?” I sighed.

“Like aliens and alligators in the sewers,” Dean replied.

“So we found the Trickster, who was a janitor at the school,” Sam added, “and we stabbed him.”

Bobby said with a smile, “After I had to help because these two little girls couldn’t stop bickering amongst each other.”

“Mixed company, Bobby,” Dean said mockingly. “That’s a bit sexist.” He motioned towards me. I didn’t get it.

Without a word, I stood up and headed back upstairs. I was still a little tired. Food could wait. A shower could wait. Bobby wasn’t getting rid of me just yet, I had time to hide.

I never should have tried to sleep again. I was under the bed when the sunlight came through the window. Dreams are fickle things to begin with. Adding a stressful day upon that was asking for nightmares.

I woke up screaming.

“Lark!” I heard, followed by the pounding of boots up the stairs. “Lark!”

I was suddenly wide awake, holding my shotgun close as two pairs of feet entered the room. One ran to the window and looked out. “Where is she?” Sam asked.

“Demons?” Dean questioned.

“Will you two idjits get downstairs before she shoots your legs off?” Bobby shouted up at them.

Slowly they edged out of the room and shut the door behind them. I laid flat on the floor. My chest was heaving. My throat hurt. I laid there until everything had settled in my body. Bile had risen in my throat, but I choked it down. I swore I would not vomit in Bobby’s house.

Crawling out from under the bed, I rose to my knees and glanced out the window. It was midafternoon. It was time to leave, whether I wanted to or not. I had never been the stationary type, and I had rested enough under the protection of another. More than I was comfortable doing.

I halted my crisis and pushed past it. I didn’t have time to sit and think about my life. It didn’t mean anything, and a dream was just a dream. Even if it was a bad dream.

When I walked downstairs, Sam and Dean were sitting with Bobby in his study. “Everything okay?” Bobby called to me when I stepped off the last step.

“Bad dream,” I replied calmly.

“We thought something got you,” Dean said.

I don’t know what made me do it, but I cast Bobby a questioning look as I pointed to Dean. Bobby smiled back and said, “He thinks he’s the knight in shining armor that has to save every damsel in distress.”

“Damsel?” I asked and pointed to myself.

“Hardly,” Dean scoffed and Sam elbowed him in the side. “What?”

“I need to get going,” I said and the room went quiet.

“You don’t want anything to eat before you go?” Bobby asked.

It was so kind to the point of being irritating. “I have to go,” was all I said.

“Well I got your clothes cleaned and threw in some extras for you,” Bobby told me as he left the room and returned with a stack of neatly folded clothes. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen folded clothes before.

“I apologize for the… inconvenience,” I said, offering him my newly learned phrase.

“It was nothing,” he told me.

He had Sam and Dean carry my clothes to my truck and put them in the passenger seat as he made me a meal for the road. I was truly spoiled here. I had to leave.

I thanked Bobby before I left and even shook his hand, as awkward as it was. It wasn’t the firmest of handshakes, but he could see my hesitation for even that amount of contact. “Call if you need anything,” he told me.

I said nothing, only nodded and got in my truck. Bobby waved from the road as I left. I had never gotten a farewell before. I gave my truck a little more gas to make sure I got out of there quick. I wanted to believe Bobby would never hurt me, and my visit had only reassured me. My past, however, kept me distrusting. As for Sam and Dean? Small doses.

I drove until I hit the last gas station before I hit empty. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. I was running on fumes. The station was closed for the night, so I pulled in and locked the doors. I wouldn’t sleep, I had slept all day and I wasn’t tired, but I could sit and think until I could refill my tank in the morning. Hopefully it wasn’t one of those places that was closed on random days that I needed them to be open.

I was staring at the ceiling of my truck, thinking about how I would need to find a new way to tack up the felt, or replace it altogether, when a tapping came at my driver’s side window. I sat up quickly, about to draw my shotgun when I saw a man standing at the window. He waved and I rolled it down a little.

“Scuse me,” he said, “did you break down?”

“Just stopping for the night,” I said and yawned. I had to force the yawn. I wasn’t tired. I was, however, surprised that this stranger could see me. Why weren’t the sigils on my bones making me invisible? They should have been back to full strength with a day in hiding. “Thanks for your concern.”

“Night!” he said and waved before leaving my truck. I rolled it up and watched him walk off back behind the gas station.

I didn’t like that. I wanted to just lay back down and stare at the ceiling of my truck, but I didn’t want to lose it once those nosey demons tried to get to me. Shotgun in hand, I got out and reached into the toolbox in the back of my truck. Extra salt rounds, a little bit of holy-oil, my machete for cutting off heads. I had never been fond of demons. No one ever really was.

Instead of waiting for them to come back and break my truck, I went after them. I wouldn’t be left alone until I killed the things that were thinking of killing me. Story of my life. I put my shotgun on my shoulder and walked into the oncoming fray.

I walked behind the gas station and found no one there. Of course.

“Looking for me?” I heard and turned to see a shorter man dressed in a suit. He wasn’t the same one that had been at my truck window.

“Not especially,” I replied.

“Hunter?” he asked with an accent that wasn’t from anywhere originally stateside.

“Occasionally,” I said.

“I know most of them,” he said. “Which one are you?”

“Which one are you?” I echoed him.

“My apologies,” he said formally. “They call me Crowley.”

“Ah,” I replied and then added, “I don’t know you.”

“Would you like to?” he asked and stepped forward.

I waved my shotgun at him and he took the step back. “Not especially,” I told him. “And I don’t take kindly to forced persuasion.”

“I like you,” he mused aloud.

“I can’t say I can return the sentiments.”

Someone walked toward me and I shot without looking. Crowley smiled. I knew the height. There wasn’t a head left. That demon would need to find a new host. 

“Who’s next?” I asked.

Crowley suddenly frowned and started looking around. He looked at my truck and shouted, “Find her!”

I stood very still. They had lost me just like that. I wondered if my sigils had come back to full strength when I was perceived to be in danger. Crowley left and his fellow demons stepped out to look for me. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

When they were all laying on the ground, I heard from behind me, “Just like that, huh?”

The sound sent chills up my spine. I didn’t want to turn around. I had to have a plan if I turned around and I didn’t. There was nothing I could do to kill the creature behind me, and I did not want to be at his mercy once again. I did not want to be on my knees asking for my life. What had even been the point of running away, and how had he found me?

“You know those were innocent people being used by those demons,” he said and I wasn’t quite sure what he was getting at. Were there quicker ways to kill a demon and save the meatsuit? I didn’t know of any.

“Sentimentalities are what gets other people killed,” I replied, my hand tightening on my shotgun.

“You’re invisible,” he said. “You have the time.”

“In case you haven’t noticed,” I said as I slowly turned to face him, that damned archangel. “When you’re around, people tend to see me.”

He was sitting on the edge of the back of my truck. There was no way I could trap him in holy-fire that way unless I wanted to lose my truck too. “And they can’t see you now,” he told me.

“I’m imagining it has something to do with you,” I said. I didn’t want to look at him, so I focused on his shoes. Very comfortable looking shoes. I was afraid that if I looked in his eyes, I would be back in that bedroom, or worse, my nightmare would become reality.

“You shouldn’t be hanging around with demons,” he told me and I wanted to shoot him again. “Especially right now. Crowley’s looking for the last Colt.”

Something in the way he said “last Colt” was very unsettling.

“For?” I asked suspiciously, my eyes narrowing on the black of his sneakers. They were dirty. Did he drag his feet when he walked?

“To make him a weapon,” he told me.

I laughed, a rude, mocking sound. “I’m not a gunsmith,” I blurted. “I couldn’t help him anyway.”

I could feel his eyes boring holes through me. He wasn’t stupid. We were all gunsmiths. My sawed-off was the first one I ever made. If there was anything I knew, it was how to make a gun and how to shoot it. I didn’t trust a weapon that wasn’t forged at the homestead, preferably by my own hand. I could not, however, make a gun like the one Samuel Colt had. That “kill-all” art had been lost to the rest of us when his equipment had been hidden.

“Crowley has Samuel Colt’s tools,” he said and my attention snapped to his face.

“Bullshit!” I said. “There’s no way! They’re buried at the homestead!”

“Your uncle apparently took them when he left,” the archangel told me.

I understood then why I was the last Colt. My uncle had been found and killed defending what he had taken. Perhaps Crowley didn’t know he had needed him to build his fancy weapon.

Gabriel was looking me straight in the eye and all I managed to ask was, “How did you find me?”

“You were…” he said hesitantly and looked away from me. I wasn’t sure what the gesture was. “…compromised, after our last encounter.”

I didn’t like that wording either. I felt like damaged goods now.

“Get off my truck,” was all I managed to say. It wasn’t like I could run. I was out of gas. I really didn’t want to burn my truck with holy-fire.

“Lark,” he said and I winced at the sound of my own name. He suddenly went quiet. Slowly, he slid off the side of my truck and took a step away from it. He still stood between me and the only thing I had in the world. “I’m not here to hurt you, Lark,” he said softly. He had noticed my discomfort around him.

Without warning, he smacked the side of my truck and a loud bang issued from the old metal. My shotgun went up as I took a step back and he held up his hands.

“We need to talk,” he said slowly. “Meet me tomorrow night at the bridge.”

“No,” I said. First, no matter what, I was not going to be alone with the archangel that could easily overpower me. Second, there was no way I could make it back to that bridge by tomorrow night. Unless I left at that second, and I had no gas for that old Chevy.

“You’ll never run out of fuel again,” he told me and then was gone in the whoosh of wings.

I ran around my truck, making sure he wasn’t there, before I jumped in the cab. I had been sitting on empty when I rolled into that dark gas station to wait for morning. Taking a deep breath, I turned the key in the ignition and it roared to life. The gauge took a second, but it jumped all the way to full and stayed.

“What the hell is this angel getting at…?” I growled to myself.

I made the decision to go. I wasn’t proud of it, but I wanted Samuel Colt’s tools back. It was another thing that kept me safe. I would just have to take precautions so that I wouldn’t be caught with my back against the wall again.

When night fell, I was standing in the middle of that bridge I had left the archangel Gabriel at. My truck was parked off the road and at a safe distance. I leaned back on the wooden rail and crossed my arms. In my hand was the trigger. If I was going to die, I would take him with me.

I heard him arrive before I saw him, and I looked down the bridge to where he walked towards me. Again I looked at his feet, concentrating. I wouldn’t let him look into my mind.

“You have no reason to trust me,” he said as he stood across the bridge. “I don’t expect it. But I am trying to help.”

“Why?”

He faltered. I looked up at his face and it betrayed his discomfort. He wasn’t going to tell me. “The weapon,” he began, “the one Crowley believes you can make with Samuel Colt’s tools, can kill God. I am an angel of the Lord. I have to look out for the safety of Heaven and my father.”

“Crowley can do whatever he wants to me,” I shrugged. “I can’t make that gun.”

“I can’t allow that,” he said.

I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but I said, “Because I’m supposed to breed a new line of Colts?”

“Because you are a Colt,” he replied. It occurred to me then that we were talking about Crowley killing me.

“You’re a really shitty guardian angel, then,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure if he had heard me.

“I know,” he sighed, and I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly. “Look,” he said, “you can blow the bridge and kill us both with those holy-fire incendiary explosives that you set up, or you can let me help you. Together we can get back Samuel Colt’s tools. You can hide them where no one else will ever know, and then we’ll go our separate ways.”

This was a true archangel asking me to save God. It was one of those decisions that would be weighed against my soul when I died to throw me into the fiery pits. I was going to hell anyway. I considered then getting the tools back to make the gun and go after the Devil myself. For what weapon could kill God should also be powerful enough to kill Lucifer. I scoffed to myself. I wasn’t about to take on Lucifer. That would be stupid. I wasn’t stupid.

I wasn’t surprised in the least that he had known about the holy-fire incendiaries. It was probably why he had stood so far and gotten quickly to the point of our meeting.

“Ground rules,” I said.

“With your sigils at strength, I can’t find you if I lose sight of you,” he told me.

“People will see me with you around,” I said. “I can’t get close to Crowley if they all know I’m coming.”

Gabriel went quiet. He seemed to be thinking of a solid plan.

I came up with one quicker. “Bait,” I said.

As soon as the word left my mouth, he said, “No.”

“I meant me,” I told him.

“Never.”

“I’m sure I’m the only one that really knows what they’re looking for,” I said. “You make me visible. So either you’re in and I’m bait, or you’re out and it doesn’t matter what you think because you can’t be close to me without revealing me.”

“I don’t like this,” he said and shook his head.

“Make the call,” I said. I could handle Crowley either way, with or without Gabriel’s help. I wasn’t even sure he could help me at all. He was more likely to get in the way.

“Lark,” he said softly. “Please don’t put this decision on me. I will help you any way I can, but I refuse to be the cause of any injury to you again.”

Again? I wondered if he meant that apple-pie bedroom where I bust my head open. The bedroom in my nightmares. In those dreams, I didn’t get away. I couldn’t get away.

“Lark?” he asked when I had gone silent. I was so far in my own thoughts, I almost didn’t hear him. “I want to help. But I can’t let you just throw yourself to crossroads demons.”

“Then what do you suggest?” I asked.

“Lure them out? Make them come to you,” he said. “Four female hunters have been killed in just the past two weeks while Crowley has been looking for you.”

I hadn’t heard of that. Why hadn’t Bobby told me? Had he known?

“I’ll give your plan a solid month,” I said. “After that. I do it my way.”

He didn’t like my answer, but he agreed to it. Then, to my surprise, he said, “Now, your ground rules?”

I hesitated just a moment before saying, “Do not touch me. Ever. Two, when I’m asleep in the truck, you’re not in the cab. And three, don’t get in my way.”

He nodded solemnly. It almost seemed if he was trying to think of loopholes. I would be carrying matches and holy-oil until I died.

I spent the first whole day driving. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but with an unending supply of fuel in my tanks, there was no reason to stop. I was starting to think the only reason I ever stopped for anything was to gas-up.

I didn’t realize I hadn’t slept until I woke up and my truck was pulled over on the side of the road. Gabriel sat in the back of the truck, on top of my toolbox.

I jumped out of my truck and started pacing. I had no idea what had happened, and as I stood in front of my truck, I asked him.

He stood up on my toolbox and bent over the roof of my truck like a supermodel. I could hardly look at him. Then, very seriously, he said, “You fell asleep. I didn’t want you to die, so I pulled the truck over.”

Standing like that, I wasn’t sure if I could be mad at him. I wasn’t even mad at him in the first place, I only wanted to know what had happened. “Um… okay then,” was all I could say.

“You look hungry,” he said.

I didn’t realize it until he said something. “A bit,” I replied. Hunger pains were nothing. I had been ignoring them all my life.

“There’s a little place up the road,” he told me and jumped out the back of my truck.

Up the road meant another fifty miles to a rural town. And a little place, was obviously a popular place. I wasn’t keen on going inside, but as I parked my truck, the archangel was quick to get out.

It was a ranch-type steakhouse with the wooden walls and the old equipment for decoration. Every town had at least one. It was the easiest thing to use since they just had to walk outside to the barn and pick up a rusty piece of metal and stick it to the wall. I didn’t fault them one bit. Practicality.

The moment I walked in, I knew people saw me. I stood close to Gabriel as we waited for the hostess to come to us. “You look scared,” he said.

“I’m not a fan of people,” I replied. It was better to have the asshole I kind of knew at my back than have strangers at my back. Any one of them could have been a demon.

When the hostess came to us, she said to me, “Girly, you are skin and bones. You need to eat!”

I looked down at myself and had no idea what she was talking about. “Do I look emaciated?” I asked Gabriel and he smirked. I was lean muscle. I could run all night. Not to mention, I was wearing several layers of clothes. I wondered how the hostess could even see what I looked like.

There was a short wait until we got a table. I sat with my back to the wall, my eyes on the door. No one was coming into that building without me seeing them.

“Paranoid,” Gabriel said.

“Still alive,” I said.

I had never really been in a restaurant. I didn’t know what to do. When the waitress asked me what I wanted to drink, I ran over all the scenarios in my head. She could poison my water if it came out of the tap. A soda could be poisoned as well. I didn’t care for sodas, anyway.

And then Gabriel spoke. “Two beers,” he said pointing at one of the menus, “leave the caps on.”

The waitress seemed a little confused, but she shrugged and left. The archangel was catching on.

I looked at the menu and wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking at. There were a lot of words. Fast food was easier. There were just pictures and numbers. If it looked good, I ate it. Often with fast food, it may have looked good, but it didn’t taste like it. I still ate it.

Gabriel was looking at the desserts.

“I don’t know what any of this is,” I admitted after looking at different things, the pictures not making much sense.

He looked back at me with a furrowed brow and said, “Well, what do you like?”

I had never thought that would be one of the most difficult questions I had ever been asked. They always put the fanciest things in the pictures, and none of it looked appetizing.

I must have been quiet too long, for the waitress returned and asked what we wanted, and Gabriel ordered for me. I was not a fan of that. “What was that you told her?” I asked sharply.

“It’s good,” he said. “Trust me.”

Beer on the table, I set the cap on the edge of the table and popped it off. Gabriel looked at me for a moment as I took a drink.

“It’s a twist-top,” he said as he unscrewed his.

I shrugged. I was as uncultured as they came, and he had been around since the beginning of time. I was suddenly a little wary of my own awkwardness. I glanced around and saw other women dressed in tighter clothes with their cleavage exposed. Short skirts and high boots. Their clothes were tiny compared to mine. I felt very out of place. Many of them were painted up and plucked to nothing. I was just this dirty woman in hand-me-down rags in their eyes.

“Don’t do that,” Gabriel said.

“Do what?” I asked

“Comparing yourself to everyone else.”

I looked away from him. He had seen something in my face, or he had read my mind.

“Everyone should be different,” he said.

“But I thought we were all made in God’s image,” I said as I took a drink.

Gabriel only smiled at me. It wasn’t patronizing, but was more like he had liked what I had said.

I didn’t know what God looked like, but I had always thought it strange that people celebrate individualism and yet we’re all supposed to be the image of God. I had heard of schizophrenia, but that was ridiculous.

I smirked, thinking of a God with multiple personalities. I wasn’t close to God anymore. And yet there I was having lunch with an angel of the Lord.

“Is this what you do?” I asked. “Come down to poke at the rest of us like bugs?”

I had said something wrong. Every glimmer of happiness and amusement was gone from his face. It might have hurt him less if someone had broken every bone in him. Or something equally as painful for angels.

I sat up straight and as far back in my chair as I could. Food came to the table, but I wasn’t interested in it anymore. I was trying not to shoot him or make a run for it. If it couldn’t be killed, the best bet was to run and hide. I was good at both of those. Very good.

The moment a strange dessert was set before him, his eyes lit up and he pushed back the offense he had taken and picked up a spoon.

Before me was a large burger with bacon and cheese and peppers and some kind of hot sauce. There were onions and tomatoes and the greenest pieces of lettuce I had ever seen.

My stomach growled away my apprehension. I didn’t even know where to start. It was the largest burger I had ever seen. I picked up the knife on my plate and cut it in half. Manageable pieces.

The first bite was what I had imagined Heaven to be like. If my life flashed before my eyes before I died and I remembered that burger, I would die happy. It could have been the middle of the Apocalypse with the Four Horsemen killing everyone around me, and I would sit happy with a burger like that.

“Told you it was good,” Gabriel said as I stuffed my face.

I finished my burger before he finished whatever it was he had in front of him. I was stuffed. I had never been so full. I had also never seen what he was eating. As I opened my second beer, I asked, “What is that?”

“You’re joking,” he said and then said, “You’re not joking?”

“No,” I replied. “It looks sweet…”

“It’s ice cream,” he told me. “You’ve never had ice cream?”

“I don’t eat sweet things.”

“By choice or because you’ve never had it?”

I had to think about that. It was true I had never had ice cream, or anything sweet for that matter. There was no use for candy, and it had always been an eat what you need to survive kind of lifestyle. Sweets never made a debut.

I shrugged. “Never had it, never needed it.”

He gathered a little onto his spoon and then held it out to me. I was reluctant.

“Try it,” he said.

Hesitantly, I took the spoon from his hand and put it in my mouth. It was almost unbearably cold and it was so sweet I couldn’t help but make a face.

Gabriel took the spoon from my hand and said, “Maybe you’re a sherbert kind of person…”

I didn’t know what he was talking about.

As he dipped back into the ice cream, he said, “So no candy?”

“Never,” I replied.

“We need to stop at the store.”

If the angel wanted to go to the store, we would stop at the store. It wasn’t like I had to be concerned about the gas.

When we were back on the road almost to the only gas station in town, I had to pull over.

“Lark?” Gabriel asked.

I wasn’t feeling well. I got out of my truck and went to the ditch and puked until there was nothing left. The burger didn’t taste as well coming up as it had going down. Everything was chunks and bile and my stomach still tried to heave when I was empty.

My legs shook from the exertion and I fell back to slide against my truck until my seat touched grass. Gabriel crouched beside me. He didn’t touch me, only hovered. I couldn’t see his face, I was staring at my feet as sweat began to dry on my skin.

I could go the rest of my life without eating a burger like that again.

“Right,” he said as he sat beside me, at enough of a distance that I wasn’t immediately put off by it. “Fast food and convenience store sandwiches from now on.”


	4. Gabriel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lark and Gabriel are on the hunt for Crowley, but it brings them more problems than it solves.

Chapter 4: Gabriel

Lark was not about to call it a day. I hadn’t even been able to tell she wasn’t feeling well after eating. She had seemed perfectly fine until she pulled onto the side of the road and jumped out of the truck.

She sat on the side of the road for nearly an hour before she took a deep breath and stood without warning. I just followed her and we were right back in the truck. She still didn’t seem to be at full health, but she said nothing. When we stopped at the convenience store, she sat in the truck and I was the only one to get off. She cut the engine and set her forehead against the steering wheel.

If she wouldn’t let me heal her, then there had to be some kind of human medicine she would be willing to try. When I was standing near the medicines for some time with a handful of candy bars, the cashier asked, “Your lady friend sick?”

I looked to him and he said, “You’ve got your hands full of candy and you’re staring at aspirin like you’re looking for a lifesaver.”

Human things were strange. “That obvious?” I asked.

“What’s her problem?” he asked.

“Vomiting after eating and overall not feeling well,” I said.

He walked over to me and handed me three different things from the shelf.

I returned to Lark with a plastic bag and she barely turned her head to look at me. She groaned when I offered her the different things the clerk had recommended. I thought I had done something wrong until she grabbed the pink one, opened it, and took a drink like it was water.

We were off again, like nothing was wrong. She didn’t play music, just let the sound of the engine fill the cab.

“I do have a question,” I said. “How will we be luring these demons out if we’re in the truck for the whole month?”

She didn’t say a word as she pulled into a shady motel. The room she got was old and musty with two full-sized beds. I was standing in front of the truck when she walked in and left the door open. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to follow her in, then I realized she wasn’t coming back out. I crossed the threshold of the room and found her in the far bed with the pillow covering her face as she lay curled up on her side with her back to me. She was certainly not feeling well.

I closed and locked the door and then sat down on the extra bed. I didn’t see us moving until she was better, so I found the remote for the television and turned it on. I couldn’t help but be amused at the various ways humans humiliated each other in reality television. Either it was some physically harming game show, or overly dramatic groups of people trapped in one place.

“Turn it down…?” Lark said softly, her words a groan.

I hit the volume down and changed the channel. Doctors shows and bad movies. And then there was the typical late night programing available in a seedy hotel. I wasn’t against watching it, but I wasn’t going to watch it with Lark in the room.

“Really?” she grumbled when she heard the softcore music.

I turned it off and lay back on the bed. The quiet was better for her recovery since she wouldn’t let me help. It would have been easier.

I felt trapped in that quiet room, but I wouldn’t leave her side. The last Colt was in my care, and even if we retrieved Samuel Colt’s tools, I had a lot to make up for. Raphael had proclaimed it hunting season on Lark to retrieve Samuel Colt’s effects. He was planning to be much more forceful in his attempt to make her cooperate. I could keep her safe. I had to. Now, I only had to convince her that I was worth keeping around, and around was the last place she wanted me.

I needed to be compliant. No angel would dare serve a human like I was trying to do. I would pay for it later.

 

In the early morning hours, I listened to the water run in the bathroom sink. Listened to it splash on a tired face. Lark stepped out of the room long enough to retrieve a set of clothes and then she returned to shower. I turned the television back on. The quiet she surrounded herself with was deafening. It was maddening.

An hour later, she left the bathroom fully dressed, her red hair tied over her shoulder in a long braid. She was wearing her long black skirt, a green blouse, and a short denim jacket, the exact ensemble she had worn when we had first met. Lark had always known how to dress to fit in with a crowd. She always knew how to look like she belonged in a world that didn’t belong to a hunter. And yet she elected to live on the fringes and dress however she wanted, without comparing herself to anyone else. I liked that about her. A truly individual soul.

She had easily made me think she was harmless, and she could have made anyone else think the same, too.

Sitting on her bed, she pulled on a pair of shiny black boots and laced them up.

“Where are you off to looking all dolled up?” I asked.

“Trying to find demons,” she replied.

She still sounded tired. Her outfit intrigued me. Dressing nice and calling herself demon bait. I was curious as to how she would act out in the real world. Like she had in the circus? That was an entirely different woman. And I wasn’t sure she could do it after our misunderstanding. People weren’t that strong.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked. She seemed skeptical at my compliance.

“Keep an eye out,” was all she told me.

I changed the appearance of my vessel and followed her into town. She didn’t even look the same as she had at the restaurant. No one would notice. She didn’t even hold herself the same way.

There was a sway in her step as her heels clicked across the road. She was confident, with a content smile on her face. In a cafe, she sat down with a glass of iced tea and she looked over the newspaper.

It wasn’t long before a man asked to sit with her, and she welcomed him to her table like an old friend. She giggled and smiled and played with her hair. And as he had coffee with her, he tried to touch her hand when they spoke. She let him.

She played her part so well, I wouldn’t have recognized her. Even playing in the shadows her whole life, she knew how to be invisible even when she wasn’t. Just another woman. A pretty face.

Suddenly, she looked at the watch on her wrist and got out of her seat. He rose with her and they left the cafe. He placed a hand on her shoulder as he pointed into town. Then she nodded and they waved goodbye. From there, she went shopping. There was this amazing, clueless air to her. She wanted people to think she was lost or simpleminded. It was working. She was approached by nearly everyone she passed. She was a magnet. Her smile was electric.

I reminded myself it wasn’t real. This wasn’t the real Lark Colt. And right then, in the midst of all that talking and touching, the real Lark wanted to run. She was miserable when she smiled like that. Her skin crawled when she was touched by another human.

I had never met a human so backwards before. I never wanted to see that smile, that empty complacency, on her face again. Was this how she viewed everyone she shared the world with?

With bags in hand, she returned to the hotel. I met her there in my vessel’s true form as she hung up clothes and then collapsed on her bed once again.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

“Pink one…” she muttered.

I assumed she meant the medicine I had given her the day before and I took that to her again. She took a drink and set it on the nightstand. Then she set the alarm to give her four hours, and she put the pillow back over her head.

Sitting on my bed, I watched her lay there. Had I killed the last Colt with a Monster Burger?

There was a marathon on t.v. about an attractive doctor. I watched it silently until her alarm went off. She silenced it with a swift hand and then left the bed with sluggish steps. She rubbed her forehead as she grabbed a garment off the hanger and walked into the bathroom.

She was in there for nearly an hour, but when she stepped back out, I couldn’t keep my mouth closed.

Her long red hair had been tied back in a messy bun and held up with a rhinestoned clip. Her dark green dress was form-fitting and stopped mid-thigh. She still wore her short denim jacket. I couldn’t help but look at her long legs, pale and smooth. And then her shiny black boots with a little heel made her just a bit taller.

The dress was too tight to hide a weapon. I noticed quickly that it was very tight, leaving little to the imagination. One smooth silhouette. Then I asked, “Are you wearing underwear?” I stumbled over my words. “Protection! I mean a gun!”

She looked at me with red lips and a beautifully painted face and said, “No.” She lifted a tiny purse and pulled out a silver knife, salt, matches, and a little bottle of holy water.

“You’re just going to piss of a demon like that,” I told her.

“I’m trusting you, Gabriel,” she said and the words hit me like a weight. I wasn’t sure I had ever had so much responsibility before. This one night could make or break the future of our working relationship. I had to keep her safe.

I changed the appearance of my vessel and arrived at the bar nearly an hour after she did. It was the kind of place where locals showed up only to see if anyone new had arrived in town. I had desperate women buying me drinks the moment I stepped through the door. And Lark was the belle of the ball, attracting more attention than I knew she wanted. The man that she had spoken to at the cafe was trying to teach her to play pool by standing too close. He wasn’t even that good.

“What’s so special about her?” I heard to my right and glanced over to see one of the locals standing beside me.

“Redheads,” I muttered and shrugged.

She chuckled, “Not your type?”

“Can’t take them anywhere,” I said roughly, “They burn in the sun.”

She found that amusing and offered me her hand. “Angela,” she said.

I shook her hand and replied, “John.” It was easiest name to throw out there. There were more Johns than anyone else.

If there ever was a thing as over-sharing, that’s what Angela did. She talked about her life and her ex-husband, and I tried to remain interested as I kept an eye on Lark, but there was only so much negativity I could consume in one sitting. It was conversations with Lucifer all over again. Whining about everything. At least she wasn’t about to kill anyone over it.

I raised my beer bottle and said, “To health and future happiness.”

“Here here!” she smiled.

For the next two hours, Angela tried to get me to go home with her. When that wasn’t working, she decided to keep buying me alcohol in the attempts to change my mind.

Lark came up to the bar and ordered a Jack and Coke. She looked to me and smiled. I didn’t think she knew who I was, but the moment she said, “Hi,” quite friendly, Angela was on the defensive.

“Hi Red,” she said bitterly.

“Christie,” she said and offered her hand. Angela just stared at it, so I shook it instead.

“John,” I said.

“Friendly little town you’ve got here,” she said and cast a glance to Angela as she took a drink. I wasn’t sure if it was a slight at the woman beside me for only having one person to talk to. I didn’t think Lark was that petty. The real Lark wasn’t, but I wasn’t so sure about this Christie.

The man she had been chatting with then came back to the bar and steered her away. I was hoping Lark remembered she was supposed to be looking for demons and not on a date. Then I saw him lean in to kiss her and she smiled into her glass as she kept it at her lips.

“He’s trying a little hard, you think?” Angela asked me. Pot calling the kettle black.

“It’s a little sad,” I replied.

“I know, right?” she added.

When the man tried to do it again, another stopped him. “Hey, buddy, why don’t you lay off a little. Give the lady a break, she hardly knows you.”

“Mind your own business,” said the man from the cafe.

The bartender called out, “Take it outside!”

It dawned on me then that there really was a reason Lark avoided contact with people. Not that she had some kind of superpower that attracted them, but that she had seen only the terrible ways they treated one another. The ways they imposed their strength on one they considered weaker and tried to force or control one another. The way the man was trying to do with her. She had only seen the want in others, and none of the give. Everyone wanted something from her. And I was no different.

The two men seemed to calm down, and then the one from the cafe left with his hands balled into fists. With a simple greeting, it started all over again. This new man only talked. It was like the good cop, bad cop, routine that was in every police drama.

Slowly everyone left and the bar was closed at two in the morning. Lark went back to the room and I met her there in my vessel’s natural appearance. I walked into the hotel to see her throwing shoes in the closet with anger that I wasn’t used to seeing in her. She immediately noticed I was there and retreated to the bathroom again.

The shower came on and I went back to watching television. Steam came from under the cracks in the bathroom door. I hoped she wasn’t cooking herself alive.

The water ran for an hour and a half, and then it was silence for an hour more. The door then opened a crack as I was laying on my bed staring at the ceiling and I heard, “Gabriel?” in a voice so unsure that I was hesitant to move.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“I… forgot a towel.”

I left my bed and retrieved a large one from the rack beside the closet. Then I turned my back and walked backward until she could reach through the door and take it. It would take another thirty minutes, at five in the morning, to admit that she had forgotten to take her clothes in with her as well.

I just took her the bag from her truck.

Tattered jeans and a worn white shirt with green sleeves. Then she went to lay down, took another drink from the bottle of pink medicine, and covered her head with her pillow.

I had to ask. “Lark?”

“Hm?” was the answer I got.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but humans aren’t supposed to exist on alcohol and Pepto-Bismol, right?”

“No…” she grumbled.

“Want me to get something?”

“No.”

I sat on my bed and watched her curl upon herself. She didn’t want to eat. She refused anytime I tried to help on my own. “What happened?” I asked.

“It was just the first day,” she muttered. “Don’t rush me.”

“No,” I said and shook my head. “To you? To your family?”

She lay very still and gave me no answer. She trusted me enough to watch her back when it came to luring in demons, but not when it came to the history of the Colt lineage. Something had gone terribly wrong. I could feel it.

 

We left in the morning and barhopped in little towns for a week straight. After every bar, Lark would sit in a hot shower and burn the fingerprints of strangers from her skin. She didn’t forget her towel or her clothes after that first time.

“I’m not sure we’re getting anything,” I mentioned at breakfast in a small diner one morning.

She handed me the local newspaper and pointed to the headline on the front page. There was a string of murders in the direction we were going. Something was following us, trading body after body to look a little different and get a little closer. I hadn’t been able to tell one person from another.

“Did you notice?” I asked.

She shrugged. If she had, she wasn’t mentioning it. After a few days of roiling indigestion, Lark’s appetite was still low.

“Feeling any better?” I asked when she listlessly stirred her bowl of soup with little intention of eating it.

“I don’t want this…” she said, her head in her hand.

I wondered if this was how it felt to be human, continuously confused about the person sitting across the table from me. “Trade?” I asked and she looked at me with an expression that displayed exactly how I felt.

I didn’t have to eat to survive, but she did. And even if she was eating chocolate cake and strawberries, it was better than nothing.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Chocolate cake?”

“Is that the stuff they serve at birthday parties?” she asked.

“I suppose,” I replied. “Did you have it any of yours?”

I know I had said something wrong by the way she scoffed. “No,” she said. “I can’t even tell you how many years I’ve been alive.”

I stared at her. “I thought birthdays were really important,” I said.

She shrugged. “Never had one,” she said. “We were always on the move, and afterward, it was just me. There’s rarely a reason to pay attention to the time when you’re invisible.”

I passed my cake to her. “Try it.”

She took my fork and took a tiny bite. “Too sweet,” she said and passed it back.

“What did you eat growing up?” I blurted, “Dirt?”

“Only during Lent,” she told me. There was no humor in her voice.

I pointed to her soup and she passed it to me. I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to taste like, but it wasn’t good. “Bland,” I told her passing it back.

“At least there’s something we can agree on,” she said, stirring the bowl again.

Eventually, she set it aside relatively untouched. I was curious if she was ordering food to humor me, since afterward, we stopped at a gas station and she found herself an unappealing sandwich.

“That doesn’t look very good,” I mentioned to her when she got back into the cab.

“Full of e.Coli and salmonella,” she replied.

“That tastes good?”

“Not at all.”

At the hotel that night, I turned on the television and Lark laid down on her bed. This time, she didn’t cover her face, she turned toward the box and asked, “What’re you watching?”

“Ridiculous game shows,” I replied.

“I’m staying in tonight,” she told me.

I wasn’t about to tell her otherwise. If she wasn’t driving, she was out pretending to care about talking to people. She was only human. She had to sleep at some point.

“I’ll give you some quiet,” I told her and set the remote beside her before leaving the room. I was certain she didn’t want me in there while she was actually trying to regain some semblance of peace. She was used to being alone, and that was where her comfort lie.

I spent the night laying in the back of her truck, staring up at the stars and thinking about home. I had been gone for so long, and yet there was still chaos. My brothers were still not done fighting. Lucifer was imprisoned until the time of the Apocalypse. Heaven, Earth, and Hell were all in turmoil. All I had ever wanted was laughter. I missed laughter. I missed my father. Where had he gone?

 

“Must be really boring for you,” I heard at the break of dawn.

Lark stood at the driver’s side of the truck bed and looked down at me.

“The millions of things you could be doing, and you’re tailing a person that requires sleep,” she said. A yawn escaped her and she covered her mouth and looked away.

“We’re after the same thing,” I said.

“I sure hope so,” she replied and tapped her hand on the side of the truck before walking back inside.

She still doubted me. I was starting to understand that I could do everything in my power and plead on my knees, and she would not be interested in anything I had to offer. We were still at square one, humoring me until the month’s end. I had no doubt she would run away to take on Crowley on her own.

 

That night, she was dressed up again. I showed up at the local bar after her and no one noticed I was even there. All eyes were on her again, and yet another person was trying to teach her how to play pool. He was also very bad at it, and just using it as an excuse to touch her.

About an hour after I arrived, she excused herself to the bathroom. She wasn’t looking for me, so I didn’t move from my seat at the bar. She took her time, making those men wait. It was easy to see what kind of thoughts were on their minds. When she walked back into the room, she was wiping at a dirt mark on the lap of her dark dress. I barely caught her saying, “Those bathrooms are filthy,” as she strode past me. I didn’t think she was talking to me. She didn’t even know who I was with the new face I had chosen for my vessel.

Several beers later, at midnight, one particular man was too close to her. When he spoke, there was a thin gap between their bodies. He held her hands in his and backed her up against the pool table. Lark kept smiling. Her words ended with her tongue touching her red lips. She ran her finger down the buttons of his shirt and then led him away from his friends.

They whooped and hollered as she took him out the back of the bar and into the alley.

I was supposed to follow her. I was supposed to keep her safe. As soon as I could, I left. I kept my distance in the alley as he kissed her neck and held her close, and she made little noises of pleasure that struck me from where I stood. I suddenly wasn’t sure what I was doing out there. I stepped back, knowing I should just go to the hotel and wait for her to return.

“What the hell?” echoed down the alley and I looked up to see the man pushing at air.

Lark had stepped back. The hunter was showing in her. Her blue eyes were sharp, nothing like the easy romantic that had been inside.

I had been wrong.

“You’re a hunter?” the man growled.

She shrugged. “I’m looking for someone,” she said. “And you’re going to tell me where he is.”

“And why would I do that?” the demon asked.

Lark stepped over and pulled herself on top of a dumpster. She didn’t say anything, only watched the demon for a moment.

He looked down and kicked around some of the trash around him so that he could see the trap she had drawn for him. “You bitch,” he spat.

Lark sighed and shook her head. She was very calm and she only waited patiently for him to realize she had nowhere important to be.

“What do you want?” he finally growled.

“Crowley.”

“Crowley?” he laughed, “A crossroads demon? Just go to a crossroads and ask.”

“Location,” she said a little sharper.

“What do you want from him?” he asked.

Reaching into her little purse, Lark pulled out the little vial of holy water.

“That’s all you’ve got?” he asked.

“It’s not about what you’ve got, Friend,” she said, “It’s all about how you use it.”

The demon laughed, long and loud. And then Lark began reciting a spell. The demon dropped to his hands and knees an an agonized groan. She wasn’t exorcising the demon from the body he had possessed. I didn’t know what the spell was. I had never heard it before.

The demon wasn’t laughing anymore. He looked up at her and she smirked back down at him and said, “Howdy.”

“What are you?” he spat.

“Just a traveler looking for directions,” she replied casually as she slid down from the dumpster. She opened the vial of holy water and let the smallest drop fall on his head. He hissed, but he couldn’t move.

“Crowley,” she said.

“I don’t know.”

Another drop. Another growling hiss.

“I don’t know!” he said again.

She knelt down in front of him and I heard her knife flip open. She didn’t say a word and I couldn’t see what she was doing from where I stood, but he didn’t like it.

“Alright!” he shouted. “Alright! Just stop! There’s an old mohair shipping warehouse on the Mississippi! He’s turned it into his hideout. I can’t take it anymore! Please stop!”

Lark said, “Thanks,” and said a spell that allowed him to stand.

When he was on his feet, he looked down at the trap that bound him and asked, “Are you going to let me go?”

“I’ll do you one better,” she said, “I’ll send you home.”

She exorcised the demon and rushed forward to catch the man’s body before it struck the ground. She lay him carefully on the pavement and checked his pulse. “Still alive,” she said.

Heaving a sigh, she sat back on the alley road and hung her head. She looked tired.

I returned my vessel to his true appearance and approached her. “Lark?” I asked and she glanced up to me.

“Is he going to live?” she asked.

I looked at the man and ran my hand over his face. He would live, but he would remember the demon had been inside of him.

I nodded to Lark and she said, “Good. I’d hate to have gone through all that extra work for him to die.” I wasn’t sure what she’d meant.

She rose to her feet and stumble to the side before catching the dumpster and holding herself up. “Aaaand, bed time,” she muttered to herself as she forced her feet beneath her.

I offered to help, but again she turned me down, this time with the wave of a hand. The walk back to the hotel room was incredibly slow. She ran out of breath or had to sit down. She was paler than usual, and the whites of her eyes showed as if she were in shock.

She stepped into the room and didn’t even make it to the bed before she collapsed to the floor. I could have caught her in time, but I wasn’t sure what to do and I let her fall. She had stated her ground rules. I could have made an exception. What I did instead was scoot a pillow beneath her head and toss a blanket over her. Then I turned on the television and tried to keep my attention elsewhere.

I could still see her with that man, that demon. The soft gasps she made echoed in my head and I turned away from her sleeping figure. She was going to scrub her skin in the morning until she bled, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t make myself stop thinking about it.

Tomorrow, I would need a night off.


	5. Lark

Chapter 5: Lark

I awoke on the floor, my head throbbing. It wasn’t just the sound of softcore porn with the volume turned low, but I was sure I had hit something on my way down. The moment I rolled over, Gabriel changed the channel. Game shows. I never thought an angel would be so enthralled with pornography, but everyone had their thing. I wasn’t in any position to judge. 

“Morning, Sunshine,” Gabriel said as I sat up. 

I hadn’t had any dreams, but I woke up feeling disgusting. I knew what had happened, what I had let happen. I could cut my skin off and I still wouldn’t have felt any better. The problems with being seen. I looked down at my clothes. I wanted to burn them. 

At least with some kind of information I could make something of it. I needed to get Samuel Colts tools so they could never be used against me again. I didn’t want to be shackled to the archangel much longer. He had shared my room too long and my nerves were more than shot. I had expected to be attacked the first night. The worry had made me nauseous. I was more prepared to run for my life than anything else. I hadn’t wanted to eat.

I had half a mind to destroy Samuel Colts gadgets the moment I got my hands on them. All they had done was bring me problems. 

“Lark?” Gabriel asked and I glanced back to him.

There was a look on his face that I couldn’t read. It was the same as any other look he gave me. I hated when he said my name. I had never heard it so much in my life. “You need a night off, too?” I sighed. 

He didn’t say anything.

“I’ll be fine. You can go,” I told him. I didn’t know if he had been waiting for my approval of him to leave my side, but I couldn’t have been happier for him to stand and walk to the door. 

“Don’t leave without me,” he said as he opened the door.

I waved halfheartedly as he left. I wouldn’t leave without him. I couldn’t. The spell I had used on the demon the night before had left me tired. I was going to have trouble standing. 

Once upon a time, someone in my bloodline had thought to tap into the power in the Enochian spell that was carved in our bones and use it in the field. Hunting demons was easier when we could force them to sit and stay like good little dogs. My father and my brothers had been quite handy with our family spells. Me, not so much. I was wiped out by kicking one demon while he was already down. I was honestly surprised I had made it back to the room. 

I laid back down on the floor. I just wasn’t strong enough to get up. I lay with my head on my pillow and watched t.v. from where I was. I had never watched so much television before, and throughout the day, the overdone crime dramas were becoming a quick favorite. 

At some point, I had fallen asleep. The floor was comfortable, there was no one else around, and aside from the white noise from the television, all was quiet. And then there was a voice. 

“I heard you were looking for me.” Crowley. No one spoke like Crowley. That certain way his mouth formed his words. Like a velvet blanket. I hated velvet. 

I opened my eyes and found myself staring back up at the demon. I tried to wiggle my toes under the blanket, tried to move my legs but I was still down for the count. It had been a long time since I had used any of the spells my family had created. I didn’t care for them. Now, staring up at a demon from the flat of my back, I remembered why. 

“Aren’t you supposed the be somewhere on the Mississippi?” I asked.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a little more careful with how quickly you extract information from a poor source?” he replied.

I hadn’t really cared what kind of information I had gotten from the demon. I was chasing bad leads for Gabriel’s sake. A month on his terms was more than I could endure. 

Crowley didn’t wait for me to answer his question. Instead, he sat down at the foot of Gabriel’s bed and hovered over me. “So who are you?” he asked, “Other than the famous disappearing woman. You had me looking quite foolish out there.”

“I don’t give my name out to strangers,” I replied with a smile. Poking a crossroads demon, or any demon, with a stick, was not in my best interest, but there was nothing I could do. I was at Crowley’s mercy, or lack thereof. 

“Is that so?” he asked. “Perhaps we can become better acquainted.”

I muttered, “I’d rather set myself on fire.”

“Possession is always an option to learning your darkest secrets, dearie.”

I laughed. “I would love to see you try!” 

I didn’t need a possession ward like the Winchesters. The scribbling on my bones was a natural deterrent. The last demon that had tried never made it back to Hell. He just burned. 

“If you’re going to try to torture information out of me,” I told him, “I’m going to need some help getting up. If not, I would very much like to get back to sleep if you don’t mind.”

“Cheeky,” he said. “You’re in luck that I’m not in the habit of wasting time right now. Unless you know where I can find the last child of Samuel Colt.”

I blurted, “There are still Colts?”

He growled at me and then he left. I had a feeling he’d been getting that response quite a bit lately. My response had been exactly what the Winchester boys had said to me when I had finally introduced myself. Their father had said the same. 

As quickly as Crowley had come, he was gone, and a surge of adrenaline pumped through my veins. I was on my feet, packing up my room and throwing everything into the cab of the truck. Clothes, shoes, guns. I wasn’t being neat about it. 

I closed the door to the room and went to my truck with every intention of driving out of town and not looking back. Then I remembered Gabriel. I couldn’t leave him behind, not because I cared about him. I was certain he could take care of himself. But if Crowley discovered who I was and Gabriel was trying to find out where I had gone, he could lead him straight to me.

I looked around. Gabriel was nowhere in sight. I didn’t know how to reach him. My heart was in my throat and I didn’t know what to do. Then I thought: pray. My prayers had never been answered before. It was one of the reasons I had stopped praying. Now, it was the only thing I could think that might work. 

“Gabriel,” I said softly, setting my forehead against the window of my driver’s side door. “Gabriel, I need you here. Please.”

“What’s wrong?” I heard, and turned to see Gabriel standing nearby. He seemed flustered and almost like he was out of breath.

“We have to go,” I told him. “Now.”

He didn’t question me, just got in the truck and I drove us out of town. I tried to keep an eye on my speed, but my foot was glued to the pedal. 

“What happened?” Gabriel finally asked.

“Crowley showed up at the hotel.”

“For what?” he asked.

“For tea!” I replied sharply. I hit the steering wheel. “He didn’t realize it was me he’s looking for and took off, but damn it he’s not in friggin’ Mississippi!”

“Where are we going?” he asked, not raising to my level of panic. 

“Sioux Falls, South Dakota,” I said. “Where I’m going to get some advice and you’re not going to show your face because I don’t want to explain why I’ve got a stranger in my truck.”

“I thought we were friends,” he said.

I didn’t give him a response. He was a liability. I needed help. Nothing had ever been hunting me before. I had never had another person in my cab, let alone an angel. My world was changing. Everything could see me. Crowley could find me. 

But what would Bobby be able to do? If Crowley found me, I’d just be dragging him and the Winchesters into the line of fire.

“Truck’s slowing down…” Gabriel commented. 

I had been slowing down. I pulled over and stopped on the side of the road.

“Lark?”

What the hell was I doing? Everything inside of me screamed to lose the angel and hide. I turned off my truck and left the keys in the ignition. I shut everything down and curled up in my seat before setting my head against my knees. 

I was still in my black dress, prettied up from the night before. I couldn’t do anything. This was out of my league, playing with angels and being hunted by demons. 

“No South Dakota?” Gabriel asked. 

I knew I had to go to Bobby. I had to ask for help from him and the Winchesters. I needed a trap, an idea, something to keep me alive and to get Samuel Colt’s tools away from Crowley. I didn’t care if I had to be bait, I just wanted to know I would be able to get out. Gabriel couldn’t blow his cover. I doubted he would anyway. 

Taking a slow breath, I set my feet back in the floor and said, “South Dakota,” and turned on the truck. I would give Bobby, Sam, and Dean a choice. If they weren’t willing to help, I wasn’t about to make them. I would figure it out myself if I had to, like always. I didn’t want to rely on them again.


	6. Gabriel

Chapter 6: Gabriel

When I had left the hotel, leaving Lark to take in a moment of peace, I had to clear my head. I had to get away from the hunter. I walked away from the hotel and stepped into my own reality. I created a bubble, a new world where nothing mattered. A shadow reality.

I stepped into a club and the stage was full of blondes and brunettes moving through the strobe lights to sultry music. A pretty little blonde, I called her Destany, stepped off the stage and walked over to me. 

She slid a finger down my chest and said, “It’s about time you came back. We missed you.” 

And then Amber Rose came down, my favorite brunette, the one I had come for. She stole me away from Destany and took me into the back. I had been locked in that truck too long. 

Amber Rose was hardly wearing anything at all. From her long legs to her slim waist. Her skin was smooth and I could already taste the sweet lotion she rubbed over her body. 

She ran her hands up my chest, pushing my jacket from my shoulders. I let it fall. I had been wearing it since I had met Lark. She turned me and pushed me to the leather couch before she straddled my lap. I missed the sensations of touch.

“Really?” I heard. “This is what you ran off to do?”

I looked around, I knew that voice. 

“Jeeze, look at those legs!” 

I looked to my left and further down the couch sat Lark, staring at the stripper on my lap. She was dressed in her normal tattered clothes and layered jackets.

“So… that’s what gets you up? Brunettes with large…” she held her hands before her own smallish chest and said, “personality.”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I told her as Amber Rose pulled my shirt over my head.

“Damn, Gabe. I’m not here. Not the real me anyway. The real me is asleep on a hotel floor. Where you left me.” She narrowed her eyes accusingly. “I am just a figment of your twisted imagination. I mean really? You can’t stop thinking about me when you’ve got yourself halfway up… what’d you call this one?”

“Amber Rose…” I said slowly as the woman on my lap touched soft lips to my neck. I shuddered.

“Really?” Lark laughed. “Damn! That’s just as bad as Destinee Diamond! Come on, Gabe, get a little original with your stripper names.”

“You need to go,” I said and with a wave of my hand, she disappeared. My attention was all for Amber Rose as she nipped at my chest. My breath caught in my throat. My muscles tensed as she knelt between my legs.

“Isn’t lust one of those seven deadly sins?” Lark was back. She sat further down the couch and smiled back at me. 

I wordlessly groaned in annoyance.

“Don’t give me that,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here in Angel-Reality Land if you didn’t want me here. Apparently I’ve got a damn season pass.”

Again I waved my hand and she disappeared.

Amber Rose kissed a trail down my chest, down my stomach. Her painted fingernails played with the button of my pants.

“Are you even enjoying yourself?” Lark asked, back in her place on the couch. 

“Damn it Lark!” I shouted. 

Everything went dark. Amber Rose was gone. The couch was gone. I was dressed again and standing in darkness. Lark was only a few short feet before me with her arms crossed below her breasts. “Technically,” she said, “whatever you did with Miss Amber Rose, you would just be screwing yourself. Or… mental masturbation? Physical masturbation? Is that allowed? What would your father say?”

I waved my hand and she vanished, and with it the dark. I was suddenly back in that old Chevy. There was nothing ahead of us but road and dry grass. I glanced over to see Lark behind the wheel. She steered with her left hand and after a moment, looked back at me. 

“Your choice?” she asked. “I thought you wanted out of my truck.”

I sat back in the seat and propped my feet in the dash.

“Might be your dream, but it’s still my truck,” she told me. “Feet off!”

I put my feet back in the floor. 

“Pout if you want, Gabe, you’re the one torturing yourself here,” she said. “I mean really, I’m just saying things you already know.”

“Torturing myself?” I asked abruptly.

“Yes,” she said. “You’re pent up and frustrated as any angel could be in a human, male vessel.” She looked me up and down and said, “A very nice vessel I might add.”

“What’re you saying?” I asked.

“You take the day off to get your own space,” she said, “and then you create your own strip club and have me crash your happy fun-time? Come on, Gabe. Don’t make me spell it out for you.”

“You?” I asked 

She looked at me out the corner of her eye and suddenly started singing Hey Jude by the Beatles. I liked that song. She took a break in the song and told me. “Might as well do it now. Just don’t tell the real me or she’ll think you’ve created a sex puppet in her image.”

It was difficult listening to her talk with the ease that the real Lark didn’t have. I doubted the real Lark would ever speak to me about sex in any capacity. With the way she scrubbed her skin, she wasn’t planning on engaging with anyone. 

In a moment of weakness that I had sought companionship with my own creation, only Lark came to mind and crashed my moment with my own thoughts. 

“Get it out of the way, Gabriel,” she said. “Then maybe after the mystery is gone, I won’t be here to crash your party next time.”

“Pull over,” I said.

“Yes!” she said and pumped her fist. 

The old Chevy Scotsdale pulled over onto the side of the road and I got out of the cab. When I turned around to face what had been an expanse of prairie grasses, it was a bedroom. The blankets were black and silken. The pillows were red. 

Lark grabbed my wrist and pulled me around to her. She was smiling, a look that gave me the feeling that my heart had jumped into my throat. She put her hands in my hair as she drew my lips to hers. She didn’t smell sweet like Amber Rose, but like dirt and gunpowder, and for some reason, that made me act. 

I wrapped my arms around her and brought her body closer to mine. She felt the way she had looked. Firm muscles under pale skin. 

She ran her hands down my arms and up my shirt. Her touch was cold against my skin but I ached for it. Since I had joined her in that 1985 Chevy, there had been nothing but distance. I missed the closeness of another body, a human body. I had stayed on Earth for humans. Their love and ingenuity. They were intriguing in every way.

Clothes were left on a dark floor and she pulled me atop her, my lips still with hers. I didn’t want to let go. There were freckles. Her hands were cold but the rest of her body was warm and welcoming as I took her on that soft bed. The moans of pleasure she had once given to the demon in an alleyway were now mine and I reveled in the moment.

“Gabriel.” My name on her lips.

“Gabriel, I need you here.” 

That wasn’t the Lark before me. It was the one I had left in the hotel.

“Please.”

My world fell to pieces. I let it all go and returned to her. I didn’t understand why she had prayed for me. I never thought she would ever do such a thing. When I arrived, she was standing by her truck with her head bowed. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked, but when she looked at me with the blue eyes I had only seen moments before, I could hardly stand to look at her. I felt guilty. 

We were back in the truck and on the road. Crowley had made a housecall. Lark was on edge. She was back in her own head after telling me. Quiet. Her hands tight on the wheel. Her teeth were clenched tight enough that I could see the muscles in her jaw. 

She must have been paying more attention to the thoughts in her head than actually driving to South Dakota and I looked out the front and found us slowing down. When I mentioned it to her, she just pulled over. 

I looked out my window. I was more than certain she had changed her mind about me following her and was going to tell me to leave, but instead, she shut the truck down entirely and pulled her legs into the seat. She wasn’t going to disappear even though she seemed like she wanted to. I kept my attention off of her and on the road. 

Lark had pulled over like her reflection in my reality had, yet this was in no way the same. The real Lark wanted to be left alone. If I had never come to her concerning Samuel Colt’s missing items, she wouldn’t have noticed. She wouldn’t have cared. And most of all, she would still be out in the world by herself. Alone and invisible. 

I was hoping we were still going to South Dakota. She wouldn’t admit it, but she had a friend there.

There was uncertainty in her eyes when she finally started the truck again. I had known before that she wasn’t the type to ask for help, but now I truly understood, if only a little, how rarely she relied on others. Crowley’s appearance had upset her enough to pray to me. I had to show her I was worth that trust. 

She pulled her truck into a junkyard late that night and she turned to me. “Out of sight,” she said as she got out of the truck. I left, but I would be watching as close as I could. I wasn’t going to get distracted by my own desires this time. I would remain out of sight, but I would be her guardian angel.

It was dark as she walked up to the back door and knocked. There was silence before the light above her came on and the door opened. 

Bobby Singer looked her from her heeled boots to her done up hair and said, “Girl, what the hell’d you get yourself into?”

Lark said nothing, only waited to be let inside. She looked small in that dress. There was no confidence. The person she had been at the bar never existed.

Bobby stepped out of her way and let her inside. He looked tired, his eyes red. “If you want to shower, change, and burn what you’re wearing,” he told her, “I’m sure I can find something for you to wear tonight.”

When he closed the door and followed her into the living room, she looked back to him and he said, “You aren’t going to insult me if you go upstairs now. I’ll go look for clothes that aren’t… that.”

She left him on the bottom floor and ran upstairs. I had known that she wasn’t comfortable in that short black dress, or any dress she had been wearing recently, but she had never let me see that discomfort until now. 

Without a word, Bobby went about looking for clothes. When he found something he assumed might fit, he took them upstairs and left them on the floor outside of the bathroom door. Steam poured out the cracks in the door. I kept out. What she did behind bathroom doors was no one’s business but her own.

Bobby returned downstairs to sit in his study. The lamp over the large book in the middle gave enough light to read by. He leaned back in his chair for only a moment and nodded off. A creaking step brought him awake with a snort and he looked over to the stairs where Lark stepped barefoot onto the floor. I had never seen her without shoes. 

She wore a pair of gray sweatpants and a red plaid shirt that hung on her smaller frame without any kind of shape. Her red hair was wet as it hung down her back. In her arms she carried the balled up dress.

A little fire carried on in the fireplace and Bobby pointed his thumb at it. “If you want,” he told her.

A flicker of a smile crossed Lark’s face as she stepped forward in light steps and tossed the black dress in. I didn’t know she had hated it that much. 

The fabric caught quickly and she knelt down at the hearth to watch it burn. The firelight reflected in her blue eyes and I could see a little of her spirit returning. 

“Bobby,” she said softly and he leaned forward in his chair to hear her. “I’m in over my head.”

I could see the question forming on his face, but he didn’t ask anything. He was very careful to choose the right words and move in the right way to try and encourage her to continue. 

“I’ve got a demon after me,” she said. “He needs me to build him a weapon to kill God. He has Sam Colt’s tools and I need to get them back. I need to hide them.”

“You’re not a gunsmith,” Bobby said.

“I don’t think he knows that,” she said and then held her hands out to the fire to warm them.

Bobby leaned back in his chair and set his hands in his lap. 

“It’s only a matter of time. Because someone is going to talk,” she said.

“You think I would?” Bobby asked, offended.

She shook her head slowly. “I trust you, Bobby. More than anyone else in the world. I trust you.” She looked to him and said, “And I won’t be offended if you say no. It’s not your job to keep me out of Hell.”

“You got a plan?” he asked.

“I wish I did,” she replied. “My old one backfired.”

“The dress?”

“Found a lower demon and got a bad lead,” she replied.

Bobby frowned. It made me suspicious. He knew something that I did not. 

“I thought,” she said, “maybe it doesn’t matter if he finds me. I can’t do anything anyway.”

“That demon’ll torture you til you’d sell your soul to be able to build that thing,” Bobby told her.

Lark shook her head. “I’d love to see him try,” she said. “Pops always said I’d be the one to survive Hell. What’s one demon?”

I couldn’t understand why she was so chatty. I was just a bit jealous. Most of our conversations ended with yelling or silence. This was just a simple conversation between two hunters and Lark seemed so relaxed.

“Laura,” he warned and she sighed. “Look, I have to work the phones for Rufus tonight. Why don’t you get some sleep and we’ll work on a plan starting in the morning?”

“How is Rufus?” she asked.

“He’s still Rufus,” Bobby sighed.

“Of course he is,” she replied as she rose to her feet. She turned and headed back up the stairs without another word. She walked on her toes, never letting her heels touch the floor as she left the room. 

When the door upstairs closed, Bobby went for his phone. He put it to his ear and waited. “Dean,” he said when it was answered. “Laura’s here. I think we might have a problem. Yeah? Alright.”

Door closed, Lark slept under her bed. A casual conversation with the man downstairs and she was back to hiding under furniture. She would hardly talk to me and yet she had slept on the bed in every hotel we had stayed in. Even if she was covering her head with a pillow. 

Under the bed, she curled upon herself and shut her eyes tight. She remained like that for a few minutes before stirring restlessly. And then I noticed she didn’t have her shotgun. I retrieved it for her and set it just under the bed. To her, it would have looked as if it had appeared out of nowhere.

When she saw it, she grabbed it and held it close. “Thank you, Gabriel,” she said softly. 

I stayed until she fell asleep.

 

Come morning, Lark was awake and the shotgun lay in her lap as she sat on the bed. She looked at it like a normal person would look at an old friend. She was in deep thought, her brows furrowed and her lips turned down in a frown. 

Taking a deep breath, she left the bed and tiptoed over to the window. The sun rising in the east cast a warm glow on her face and she set her forehead against the glass. 

The rumbling of an approaching vehicle brought her eyes up to see the black 1967 Chevrolet Impala pulling into the yard. She looked at it questioningly as the Winchester brothers stepped out and walked close to her truck. She made a slight noise of uncertainty and then left her room. 

Shotgun in hand, she went down the stairs on her toes and when she stepped onto the first floor, Bobby opened the door for the brothers. When Dean saw her, he raised the pistol in his hand and Lark was quick to raise her shotgun.

“Put that thing down, Dean!” Bobby shouted at him.

“You said there was a problem,” Sam said, his own gun raised. 

“Not that kind of problem, you idjits!” He then looked to Lark and asked, “When did you bring in your gun?”

Her eyes narrowed at him and she said sarcastically, “An angel. In the middle of the night. He had pretty eyes.”

They stared at her, the Winchester’s guns lowering slightly. 

“Laura,” Bobby said and she set her shotgun against her shoulder. 

“You call in the reinforcements for me, Bobby?” she asked.

“Can you blame me?” he said, “You come in asking for help in the middle of the night. And you sure as hell aren’t acting like yourself.”

“Dammit Bobby, I’m tired!” she said loudly. “I’ve been trying to get a lead on this demon bastard for days and you have no idea what I had to go through to get it!”

There was anger in her voice. Her empty left hand trembled and she balled it into a fist and stuck it in the pocket of her sweatpants.

Dean put away his gun and Sam followed. It was only then that Bobby let them enter. 

“So a demon’s trailing you?” Sam asked. 

“What’s it want?” Dean asked.

Lark seemed to falter. There were three pairs of eyes on her and she only then seemed to realize where she was. She tucked her anger back inside and she unclenched her fist. Immediately, she was a different person. She was the Lark that had hesitantly shared her truck with me. Quiet and distant.

“The demon,” Bobby began for her.

“No, wait a minute, Bobby,” Dean said. He then looked to Lark and said, “Look, I know we aren’t on the best of terms and junk. Hell, we’re not really on any terms, but if we’re supposed to help you, I want to hear it from you.”

Sam spoke up then. “Bobby wouldn’t have called us for any reason other than an emergency,” he said gently.

When Lark didn’t seem to want to speak, Dean said, “I’ll let Bobby speak for you this one last time, on one condition.” He opened his arms like he was waiting for a hug.

“Dean,” his brother warned him.

Dean dropped his arms to his sides and then held out one closed fist. “Fist bump,” he said. “Should be easy enough for a robot like you.”

Lark asked, “What’s a fist bump?”

Dean’s jaw dropped. “Are you kidding? Did no one teach you anything?”

Bobby said, “I told you the first time you two met her that she wasn’t like you and Sam.”

“You mean not human?” Dean asked. 

“It’s like this,” Sam said and held out his fist to Lark. “Just do the same thing.”

She held out her left fist toward Sam and he step forward and bumped his fist against hers. She looked at him, puzzled.

“Bump,” he said. “That’s all.”

Silence descended upon them then and finally Bobby moved past the Winchesters to where his desk was. “Laura has a demon trailing her.”

“I thought you were invisible,” Sam said.

Bobby looked to Lark. She looked back at him and he shrugged. “I don’t know what happened,” she lied. 

“Now she talks,” Dean sighed. 

“All I know,” she said to Dean, “is that he doesn’t know I’m a Colt, but he saw me, and he remembers me. So if any hunter I’ve ever come across remembers me and just happens to mention it to that demon, he’ll be able to find me.”

“Then you just kill it,” Dean said.

“Oh, I forgot,” she replied sharply, “Not only am I not used to having a target on my back like the rest of you, there’s something I need from this demon.”

“Something you need from the demon?” Sam asked.

“Samuel Colt’s tools,” Bobby said. “Turns out Laura’s the only one that can use them to make a weapon that can kill God.”

“Kill God?” Dean asked skeptically. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Here’s the kicker,” Bobby said, “She’s not a gunsmith.”

Sam’s brow furrowed. “But the demon doesn’t know that.”

“Nope,” Lark and Bobby replied at the same time.

“What do they look like?” Dean asked. “The tools?”

Lark shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Where are they at?” Sam asked.

Lark shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Do you have a plan?” Dean asked.

She shook her head. 

Sam frowned. “Would it really matter, though?” he asked. “Aside from having demons looking for you for a change. I mean, you can’t make the gun, so he really has no use for you.”

“Meaning,” Bobby said, “when he finds that out, he’ll probably just kill her and then we still lose Samuel Colt’s stuff.”

“Wait,” Dean said, “I thought we were trying to save Lark, not get Colt’s tools.”

“I thought we were doing both?” Sam said.

Lark shrugged. “Priority is the tools,” she said. “I am just not a fan of losing my life at the same time, but if it happens…”

I wasn’t pleased with her answer, but I couldn’t do anything. 

Sam looked at her and said, “So you need… help with getting the tools back?”

“I thought we were ganking a demon that’s after you,” Dean said.

Bobby said nothing. He appeared to know that this was coming. He knew Lark better than any of us. After a moment, he told them, “We need a plan.”

Lark went to the dark fireplace and took a seat on the floor. “That’s why I’m here,” she sighed. 

“Well,” Dean said, “let’s get started.”


	7. Lark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lark finds herself very unsure of her place in the world. With caring friends and people that can see her, it's only a matter of time before she begins to contemplate to good and evil in the world.

Chapter 7: Lark

This was going to come back at me at some point. I was sure of it. They were all going to find out that I could make that God-killing gun. Perhaps I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. I would keep that secret as long as I could. I would never make it. That is too much power for one being to have. I didn’t want to be responsible for the death of God. The backwards Catholic church was doing a bang-up job without me. 

Bobby made breakfast while Sam flipped through book after book. Dean bounced ideas off of his brother, and I hovered in the kitchen, looking into pots and pans on the stove while Bobby stirred one thing or cut up another.

I was trying to stay out of his way, but it smelled delicious. 

“I’m not a chef,” he told me.

I shrugged. Food was food. Unless it was a Monster Burger, then it was death in delicious meat form. My stomach became upset just thinking about it.

“The tools are really the priority?” Bobby asked me suddenly and I stared at him.

I hadn’t been expecting him to ask me that. “Of course,” I told him. “My life is not nearly worth so much.” 

It had been the treasure of my family. My father would have been adamant that they be returned. Out of all of us, I had been the most expendable. It was unlucky for us Colts that I was the last one left. It would end with me no matter what. The tools were worth more than my life. I wasn’t afraid to admit that. 

“Laura,” he said, “they’re just tools. Ones that only you can use. Maybe we can find a way to make you invisible again and then it won’t matter.”

I doubted I was ever going to be alone again. My time by myself was gone. I was at the mercy of angels and demons and everyone stuck in between Heaven and Hell. I had to adapt my comfort zone, and that was the most difficult thing of all. I wasn’t ready to die, but I wasn’t ready to change. Change, I was certain, was going to get me killed.

I sat down at the table and set my shotgun beside me. There was silence all around me. Everyone was busy with one thing or another, and suddenly I felt ill-at-ease. I was the only one not trying to save me. I wondered why that was. I wasn’t scared of Crowley. Everyone was scared for me. I only didn’t want my name being shared to every demon. I didn’t want the target on my back. I didn’t want to build a weapon I had no use for. Who had even decided that my family would carry that kind of burden? The power to kill God and the Devil. At that moment, I wondered, who was responsible for making us carry that burden alone. Who was responsible for making us invisible?

For some reason, I had never asked that question before. I had never wanted to know why. Why was I different? Why was my family special enough to be blessed with invisibility. Perhaps, before, since it was all I knew, I didn’t think anything of it. Now that I had seen that there was a life outside of what I had always known, I was starting to think for myself. 

“I don’t like that look on your face,” Bobby said and I looked up at him. I snapped out of my questioning thoughts and just stared at him. 

With a sigh, he said, “I’ll pack your breakfast to go.”

I hadn’t realized I had made a decision. What had shown on my face? Did Bobby really know me better than I knew myself? 

“Look,” he said, “you go do what you have to, we’ll--”

I cut him off, “No,” I said and his brows raised. “I’m not used to having a safety net, Bobby,” I told him.

He nodded. I didn’t have to explain myself. He already knew what I was saying. Staying away from Bobby Singer’s place was going to be difficult. I had run for help because I had gotten scared, and he had been ready and prepared to help me. I had wanted help, hadn’t I? He had called in the Winchesters for support, for my support. I was truly lost. 

“I get it, Laura,” Bobby said. “We’ll keep working on some kind of plan to keep from feeding you directly to the demons. But if you walk out of here, we need something to know you’re okay.”

“You want me to call in every night?” I asked. I had been joking, but it hadn’t sounded that way to him.

“Preferably,” he told me. He wasn’t kidding. “Most cell phones have a built in GPS,” he continued. “We can turn yours on and if you don’t check in, we’ll know something’s got to you and be able to get there.”

Again, something must have shown on my face because he said, “Don’t give me that look, Laura. I’m just trying to keep you from getting yourself killed like the rest of those fools you’re related to.”

No one had ever called anyone in my family a fool. Part of that was because no one knew we existed, but Bobby did. My uncle had told him a lot, much of it he probably shouldn’t have. 

“I know you’re used to being by yourself,” he said, “but you’ve got people that are willing to give you a hand every now and then, and that’s something you don’t just throw away.”

This was my first scolding that wasn’t accompanied by blood. I had been surprised by his softer tone and his insistence to help. 

“Okay,” I told him.

“Phone,” he said and held out his hand. Then he called, “Hey Sam, come in here a minute.”

Sam rose from his seat and walked into the kitchen. Bobby pointed from me to Sam and I held out my old, junk phone.

“Does this thing have that GPS dealie on it?” Bobby asked.

Sam took my phone and chuckled. “Uh…” he said, “this thing still works?”

“That’s a no,” I told Bobby.

Digging into his back pocket, Sam said, “Take this one.” He handed me back my old phone along along with one that looked fancy compared to mine. It was only then that he asked, “What’s going on?”

“Laura’s taking off,” Bobby said.

Dean called out, “We’re doing research for nothing?”

“So you’re checking in?” Sam asked me. 

“Nightly,” Bobby informed him. Then he said to me, “If you don’t, we’ll come find you.”

“You call first,” I warned him.

Dean chuckled, “Don’t want us to catch you with your boyfriend?”

When I replied, “What’s a boyfriend?” he wasn’t laughing anymore.

“Call if you need anything,” Sam told me. 

As I left Bobby Singer’s house, everything felt strange. My own family hadn’t offered help like these three men did. My own family beat me senseless and raised me in blood and guns, and these three wished me well and offered me their time without seeming to want anything in return. In my family, everything came with a price. I was hoping the Winchesters didn’t want anything, but I expected one day I would have to pay up.

In my truck, I set my hands on my steering wheel and bowed my head. I didn’t like praying to Gabriel, but he would hear me regardless if I prayed or not. After my shotgun had appeared under the bed, I knew he was there, watching me. I couldn’t shake the feeling.

“Gabriel,” I said softly, “I need to do this on my own. I can’t have you with me. Not in your vessel, nor your vessel with another face. I have to be alone right now.”

I looked around my truck. No one was there. I had a paper plate wrapped in foil and a shotgun and a big mess of clothes, but there wasn’t a body in sight. It was time to leave. 

My truck was used to stopping every so many miles for gas. Suddenly I was finding that I had to stop to take out a wrench and tighten everything back up. The vibrations were making Earl older, faster. Earl was the name of my truck. He had been my father’s truck from the day he was brand new, and I got the keys when my father was killed. Best thing he ever gave me. Or rather, the best thing I ever took. 

I was stopped on the side of the road near a small town in Colorado. There was a wrench in my hand and I was standing on the front bumper of my truck tightening the screws when a truck pulled up beside me. 

“You need help, Sir?” came out of the other vehicle and I started laughing. 

I stepped off my bumper and said, “No thank you, Sir.” 

He looked surprised. “I’m sorry, Ma’am,” he apologized. “Are you sure you’ve got it?”

“Just an old truck,” I told him and then shrugged and waved goodbye as he left. 

I was assured of two things at that moment. First, people could definitely see me. And second, I looked like a man from behind. Only one of those problems bothered me. 

When this happened, I was two days on my own. Two nights I had called Bobby before bed and told him where I was. However, when I told him, “I’m sleeping in my truck,” he told me to get a hotel room. 

I didn’t like being confined to an actual room to sleep in. 

“In case something happens and you lose your phone, we have a paper trail we can follow to find you,” he told me.

That worried me a little. Leaving a trail for Bobby was almost as bad as leaving a trail for any local demons. Reluctantly, I spent the night in a small hotel with severely dated decorations. That was the first night on my own in a room, and it was the start of never sleeping in my truck again if I could help it. 

One of the things that had always bothered me about hotel rooms was that problem with packing and unpacking. In my truck, everything was there. I hadn’t cared for the hotel rooms when traveling with Gabriel because there was someone in my room that never slept and was stronger than me. If something were to happen, I wouldn’t be able to stop it. That was why I had slept with a pillow over my head. I didn’t want to see an attack coming if I couldn’t stop it. I still had nightmares about the perfect life he had tried to create for me.

A hotel had it’s perks, however. There was room. There was a shower. I never bathed so much as those few days I was trying to understand who I was when people could see me. There was a lot I didn’t understand. What I did know, was that I was not raised the way everyone else was. 

Dark, seedy bars were where I found my comfort zone. Everyone was drunk, everyone was unhappy, and everyone was complaining to the poor bartender. Except me, and he thought that was weird. He also thought I was pretty. Compared to everyone in there, I was their definition of drop-dead gorgeous. 

I found my calling in sarcasm. It was easier to talk to people when they thought I was being sarcastic. I was just trying to get them to leave me alone. People were strange. They were cattle, crowding one another for their own desires. 

I was sitting in a bar in a rural Kansas town when I had a thought. Was I even trying to save anything? Should I be? I had grown up as a hunter, a ruthless one. Hunting always came first. Occasionally, people were saved along the way, but it wasn’t a priority. The more I saw of the human world I was trying to understand, I didn’t think I cared much for it. Everyone wanted something. No one was happy. They hurt one another with fists or words and no one batted an eye. To me, they were just another kind of monster. By birth, I was one of them. I was just another kind of monster. 

At that moment, I started recounting the stories of the Bible, as it had been taught to me. I was starting to agree with Lucifer. We were nothing. We were insignificant and disgusting. We could take paradise and it would never be enough.

“Hey,” I heard and looked up to see Gabriel sitting adjacent to me at the corner of the bar. 

“I thought I said I didn’t want you here,” I told him.

The bartender took that time to come over and ask, “He bothering you, Miss?”

I wanted to say yes, but I didn’t. I shook my head and the bartender left me and the archangel alone. So did everyone else that had been bothering me by trying to buy me drinks. “What do you want?” I asked, rougher than I had intended.

“You’ve been sitting here for three hours and every ten minutes you look more and more like you’re going to shoot up the place,” he said, taking a drink from the beer he had brought over with him.

I looked away from him. He had seen my thoughts. 

“Hey,” he said again, drawing my attention. I realized at that moment, he purposefully wasn’t using my name. People could see me, but my name was still mine to give. “People aren’t all bad. Even when they’re bothering you.”

I felt transparent. 

“Come on,” he said, “I’ll show you.” 

Then he took my hand in his and let go before I even had a chance to react. 

“I’m sorry,” he said and took a step away from me.

The word was unfamiliar. Sorry. I assumed it was apologetic. “I don’t want to go with you,” I said.

He sat back down and said, “You’re not seeing the good in your own world by sitting in dark bars with a bunch of creepers.”

Someone said, “Hey!” with offense.

“Come with me,” Gabriel said. “Let me drive this time.” Then he quickly added, “Not your truck, of course.”

The last place I wanted to go was where the angel wanted me to. I had been to that place before. His perfection where I knelt in fear. That was the same as my world, just brighter. The danger was still there.

“No,” I told him. “Now leave.”

He left without another word. His quiet departure struck me as suspicious. He knew where I was and he had been watching me. I wouldn’t sleep that night, remembering he could take me at anytime. I was uncomfortable in my own hotel room. Suddenly nothing was safe.

My phone rang a little past midnight and I swore because I forgot to call Bobby before laying down to sleep. “Sorry, Bobby,” I said, using my new word.

“Better be sorry,” Bobby replied. “How are you?”

“Tired. Goodnight.”

With a kinder tone, he said, “Goodnight, Laura.”

I put my pillow over my head and closed my eyes. It didn’t make me sleep.

Some time after sun-up, I fell asleep. I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. There was something about the archangel Gabriel that drove away my hunger and left me with an overwhelming want of alcohol. 

I returned to the same bar that night without a bit of food in my stomach. For a seedy bar, several physically attractive women showed up for Ladies’ Night. I was surprised. Then, the moment one of them opened their mouths, I wasn’t surprised anymore. Unfortunately for her, her comment had been directed at me.

“Ew, what is she wearing? Is it even a she?”

Oddly, at that moment, I had had enough alcohol in my system that I didn’t feel the need to shut up and take it. I spun around on my barstool and said, “I’m sorry you feel the need to degrade my appearance to make you feel more confident about your own. I’m also sorry that I didn’t wake up and think that I had to conform to your idea of socially acceptable grooming standards. In the future, I will learn to mind my manners. You should, too.”

She scoffed and she and her friends went to a different side of the bar.

“You are a mean drunk,” I heard and turned my head to see Gabriel again.

“Son of a bitch…” I mumbled. “What do you want this time?”

“I’m not here to intrude,” he said, “by all means, carry on. That was enjoyable. I’m just here to make sure you don’t turn into a meaner drunk.”

I didn’t care what he was saying. The more I drank, the less I cared about anything. I was used to alcohol. Sometimes, it was the only thing to drink. Usually, it was safer than the water. It was not, however, safe on an empty stomach after a sleepless night. 

“Slow down,” Gabriel told me. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

“Maybe,” was all I remember saying. 

When I was sufficiently trashed, I tried to leave the bar. I stumbled over my own two feet and staggered out the door. And when I was on the sidewalk, I started to feel ill. My stomach roiled. It felt like there were bugs prickling the inside of my throat.

And then I vomited. It wasn’t alcohol-induced vomiting, there were cockroaches on the sidewalk. There had been cockroaches in my throat. I coughed and coughed and there were only more bugs.

“Lark!” Gabriel was there, looking me over as I had my hands on my knees, trying to cough out more bugs. He stood me up and started patting me down, reaching into my pockets. Somewhere in the process of doing that, he somehow hit the phone Sam had given me and made a call. 

“Hello?” was all I heard from my right pocket and in between coughs, I drunkenly pulled it to my ear. 

“Hello?” I asked.

“Lark?” came Sam’s voice.

“Sammy!” I shouted back and then coughed up several more cockroaches. “Look, I would love to talk, but I’m drunk, coughing up roaches, and a little pissed off. I’ll talk to you later.” I ended the phone call after hurling up another handful of bugs. 

“Here!” Gabriel said and from out of my left jacket pocket, he pulled a hex bag. Then he destroyed it.

The roaches stopped coming out of my mouth. I reached into my mouth and pulled out a leg that had gotten caught in my teeth. I had sworn I would never put another roach in my mouth, but I supposed them coming out was a whole other deal. 

“Witch?” I asked Gabriel.

“Looks that way,” he replied.

“Bitch!” I shouted at no one in particular. 

“Look,” he said, “you’re drunk. Let’s get you back to your room and when you sober up you can hunt her down.”

“Why wait?” I asked as I turned around to go back into the bar.

Gabriel blocked me, holding out his arm steering be back around toward the road. “Room,” he said.

“Are you coming?” I asked.

His face reddened. “Just taking you there,” he said.

“Good,” I said. “I don’t like you. Why are you touching me? Wasn’t that a rule?”

“Calm down,” he said. “I’m just walking you home.”

“Stop touching me,” I snapped at him. He quickly let me go and stepped away. “I don’t like people touching me.”

“Lark,” he said and held his hands out. “Easy… I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“Bullshit!” Words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. “That’s what people do! I’m not stupid!”

People on the street were staring. I was yelling. Gabriel was trying to avoid confrontation and I wouldn’t let him. “You’re all the same!” I shouted.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Liar… all the same. All the damn same! You claim people. You lock them away and I will not be locked away!”

“What are you talking about?” he said softly. “I don’t do that.”

“Bullshit!” I accused him. “You’re all the same! And I will not be a toy! I will not be--” I vomited. Not cockroaches, but actual vomit, all over Gabriel’s shoes.

“Alright,” he said, “time for you to go to bed.”


	8. Gabriel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel, in an attempt to learn more about Lark's past, transports them both into the Colt Stronghold.

Chapter 8: Gabriel

Lark passed out on a street corner after declaring to the world that I had plans to kidnap her and make her into my sex toy. I had no idea what she was talking about. I took her to her room and set her in bed. Her phone rang in her pocket, and I knew it was either Bobby or the Winchesters calling to check on her, especially after her vomiting roaches while on the phone with Sam. 

I pulled her phone and answered it with her voice. “Hello?” I asked.

“Lark?” Sam asked. “Are you alright?”

“It was a witch,” I said.

“You got it?” he asked. He sounded genuinely concerned.

“Yeah. Easy,” I told him.

“Right… Night Lark.”

I hung up. I didn’t think she was the type to say goodnight to someone like him. 

I left her in her room and stepped out to sit in the back of her truck. I didn’t want to give her any reason to doubt me again. I didn’t understand what she was saying. My mind began to wander. I had had no contact with the Colts in so long. I wondered the possibility of what had happened to her in life. There were things that happened in the world that were not good, things that no person should have to endure. I feared that in my attempts to keep her family safe, I had doomed her to a life of tragedy. 

I had to know. I couldn’t fix it, everything was too far gone. I had to let it go. But I had to know, so I could try to make it better. If I could make it up to her, in some way correct my wrong, I could make it better.

Lark didn’t wake until the late afternoon. All I heard was the crashing of the table lamp and a tired, “Son of a bitch…” 

I left her truck to knock on the door. 

It was very quiet inside. Then I heard the sound of a shotgun. “It’s me,” I said.

Her immediate response was, “Go away.”

“We need to talk,” I told her.

“No,” she told me.

“You puked on my shoes,” I said.

Again there was silence on the other end. Then she said, “I don’t remember.”

“With as much as you drank,” I replied, “I’m surprised if you remember anything after I showed up.”

“All I remember is cockroaches.”

“There was a witch.”

“Explains everything,” she muttered.

“It actually doesn’t explain a few things,” I told her. “I have some questions about some things you said.”

“Oh hell,” I heard her mumble, “What did I say?”

“Can I come in?” I asked.

“I don’t know, can you?” she grumbled.

There was sarcasm there that, for anyone else, I would have just gone inside. With Lark, I wasn’t going to move until she opened the door.

Finally, it opened just a crack and she looked back at me with her too-blue eyes that were bloodshot from her drinking. She squinted against the light behind me.

“What?” she asked sharply.

“May I come in?” I asked.

She closed the door.

“I need to know about your family,” I said.

“No,” she said from the other side. 

“Lark,” I said, “I have to know what happened. I understand your distrust in me, but I want to know why.”

Again, she said, “No.”

My hands on the doorframe and leaned forward. I had to tell her. “I’m sorry,” was what I managed to say. I had to tell her. It was now or never. 

“It’s my fault,” I said. “The reason you have been invisible since birth… I was the one who… cursed your family from Samuel Colt’s descendents. When he died, I lost track of his children. I was a fool, and I was kept away by my own spell.”

She opened the door and stared back at me. Hangover or not, she appeared completely sober. She didn’t appear angry or upset, just blank.

“Will you please tell me what happened?” I asked.

“It was you?” she asked. 

“I was friends with Samuel Colt,” I said. “He was a brilliant man and a hunter like no other. The things he made revolutionized your world and I wanted to make sure he could leave a legacy. I wanted to be sure that his talents were not lost.”

“We were lost,” she told me. She was so controlled, her voice soft as she stared back at me without emotion. “We have been lost for a long time, Gabriel. Did you never even try to look for us?”

“I did,” I said. “But the spell, the Enochian carved on your bones and the bones of your father and his father, all the way back to the son of Samuel Colt. The spell will not let me anywhere near your family. If I go into the past, I can’t see them. I can’t see you at any time before I first met you.”

She gave me an empty chuckle and said, “There were so many spells and wards on the homestead, God himself couldn’t even get in.”

Something in the way she said those words filled me with dread. I was going to have to tread carefully or risk her shutting me out for good. The problem was, I didn’t know how to proceed. With Lark, every step I took was the wrong one. If I faltered, I was afraid that I would have to force her into her own past so that I could learn what happened to the Colts. I was only going to get one chance before she tried to set me on fire, if she wasn’t already planning it. 

“Lark,” I said softly, “I didn’t know. Please, let me make this right.”

She tried to shut the door in my face. I reached through and barely grabbed her wrist.

The hotel was gone, replaced by stone walls and darkness. I immediately regretted what I had done. 

“You wanted the truth,” Lark said in a breathless voice. “You’ll get it.”

Lark’s hand in mine, I tried to send us back to that hotel room but I couldn’t. “We’re stuck…” I said. She said nothing. She hadn’t lied. God could not reach here, and I could not leave. 

She moved forward, small, cautious steps, but she didn’t let me go. I had grabbed her to get here, and now she wanted me with her. I was apprehensive as she opened a door and let the dim light into our room from the cinder block hallway. It was quiet as she led me out and to the left.

Behind us came a woman’s scream of help. She had heard our footsteps and called out to us. I turned to go to her, but Lark pulled me around. 

“There is someone—” I managed to say, but she pulled me before her by my wrist.

She looked into my eyes and told me, “You don’t speak. You stay with me. You do as I do, or so help me I will set you on fire and live out the rest of my days in the past. I survived it before. I will survive it again.”

I nodded. It was all I could do. 

She walked down the hallway with me in tow and a step that said she would kill anyone that contested her. Even me. I had no power in these walls. She could kill me without holy fire. 

Boot steps in our direction made her hand tighten on mine. A tall man came into sight from around the corner. He had hair as red as hers and the same blue eyes with the same malicious intent. 

He pulled a gun on us at the same time that Lark pulled on him. I didn’t even notice that she had been armed. She must have gone for it when I came through the door. 

“Who are you?” the man asked with a rough voice. 

“Danica Colt,” she replied.

“How do I know you’re a Colt?” he asked.

Lark scoffed. “You’re an idiot,” she said and tapped the walls with the barrel of her gun. “There is no one else in these walls,” she said roughly.

“And that one?” he asked of me.

“Mine,” she said.

“Who’s your father?” he asked. 

“Your brother,” she shot back.

I was confused. Especially when the man replied, “Nathanael has no children.”

“Why would he tell you if he did, Michael? Considering the shithole you run here,” Lark told him. 

He stepped forward and she pressed her gun to his chest. He stepped back and called over his shoulder, “Nathan!” His voice echoed down the hall until a man a head shorter came quickly around the corner. 

Lark hadn’t been expecting him and she squeezed my hand in hers and held it tightly. 

“I didn’t know you had a daughter, Nathan,” the taller, red-haired man said to the shorter. 

The shorter man’s Colt-blue eyes darted to Lark and then back to his brother. “Why would I tell you if I did? I know what happens to Colt women.” He then looked to Lark and said, “I thought I told you to wait at home.”

Lark shrugged. “I wanted the truth,” she told him.

Michael said, “This is why you left? A daughter?”

Nathanael replied, “One of the many reasons I have for leaving this psychotic stronghold.”

If Michael was smarter, he would notice that there was no way for Lark to be Nathanael’s daughter. She looked young, but she wasn’t young enough. I considered the fact that he was looking for some reason to understand why there were two extra people in his home. Nathanael, however, I couldn’t understand why he would cover for us.

“Now that you two are here,” Nathanael said and waved us forward. Lark kept her pistol in hand, but lowered it as we passed Michael. 

Down the hall we went, around the corner, following Nathanael to uncertainty. Lark didn’t falter, but she still didn’t let go of my hand. 

We walked into a well lit room that looked little better than the world on the other side of the door. Lark released my hand as she closed the door behind us.

Softly, Nathanael said, “Who are you two and why am I lying to Michael?”

“You can call me Danica,” Lark said. She pointed a thumb to me and said, “Call him Gabe.”

Nathanael didn’t appear to believe the names for a second, but he went with it. “You made the wrong choice to step in here,” he said.

“I’ve been here before,” Lark told him. “But we do need to leave.”

“I’m supposed to be staying for three more days,” Nathanael said. “I can get you out of here then, but I doubt Michael will let you leave before that. Considering you’re supposed to be my family.” He then looked at me and asked, “Are you supposed to be her… husband?” 

I didn’t like the way he hesitated on the word. I shrugged as my answer. 

“You keep him close,” Nathanael said to Lark, “Michael’s boys are ruthless.”

“I’m well aware,” she replied. 

“I’ll do my best,” Nathanael told her. “But, before you leave, I would like the truth.”

Lark only looked back at him. I could almost see her thinking. She didn’t want to tell him anything.

Down the hall on the other side of the door, a woman screamed. The sound of dishes shattering on the stone floor made Lark wince. A man shouted wordlessly and the sound of bare feet echoed down the hallway.

Nathanael rushed to the door behind us and left us standing there. 

“What is it?” I asked Lark.

“A bad day,” she told me.

She checked the magazine in her gun and counted her bullets. I hadn’t expected that. She was prepared to shoot her own family. It made little sense to me. That wasn’t what families did.

“If I die here—” Lark began and I interrupted.

“I’ll bring you back.”

She looked me in the eye and said, “Don’t you dare.”

If she had grown up in this place, why would she not want to return? Why would she refuse to be brought back to life? Wasn’t that what humans wanted? A second chance at life after death?

Lark didn’t grab my hand this time as she stepped out of the room and back into the dimly lit hallway. I followed her to the right, the direction Nathanael had gone. We walked slowly, each step deliberate. She wasn’t in a hurry to be anywhere.

Ahead of us was a doorway with bright fluorescent lights spilling out. Lark kept away from the doorway, but paused when a voice came from inside. 

“That’s why I’m here,” I heard Nathanael say. “If I can convince him, you’ll come live a normal life with me.”

I peeked inside to see him tending to the bloody bare feet of a little red-haired girl. She saw me and Nathanael turned.

“Where’s your friend?” he asked me and I pointed to where Lark stood against the wall beside me. Her eyes were closed and her arms were crossed.

“Where is she?” came a shout down the hall, a roaring voice that echoed off every surface. “Where’s that little bitch?”

A young man with dark hair and a strong build stormed towards me and stopped short when he noticed that I wasn’t familiar. “Get out of my way!” was all he said.

I was suddenly standing between Nathanael and this rabid young man that couldn’t have been more than eighteen.

Lark reached out and pulled me to her with enough force to throw me off balance. I was weak here, and I felt fear growing within me. I felt small. 

“Is she in there?” the young man shouted. “Get out of my way! I’m going to beat the shit out of her.”

“And what did she do?” Nathanael asked calmly, though I could hear the tension in his words. 

“That little shit barged in and ruined the mood! I was balls deep in that bitch and she finally shut up!”

Nathanael replied, “Isaiah, there are scheduled times for a reason. Sky had the right to be in there at meal time. You did not.”

The young man, Isaiah, roared with rage and turned away from Nathanael. When his Colt-blue eyes landed on Lark, he approached her and reached out to put a hand on her. I stepped in his way and he stopped.

“Who the fuck are you?” he shouted at me.

I had moved without Lark and drawn attention to myself. Nathanael stepped into the hallway and Lark walked past me. In mid step, she struck Isaiah’s legs out from under him and he crashed to the floor. Immediately he was back on his feet, stunned.

“Your cousin, Danica,” Nathanael said, “and hers, Gabe.”

“You named it?” Isaiah laughed.

I did not like being called an “it”.

“Guess you really like this one,” Isaiah said and circled me, looking me over as if I were meat.

Lark whistled and caught his attention. I looked, too. She had a pistol trained at his head. Silently, she waved him away with it.

“I like you,” Isaiah said as he took a step away from me.

“Cousin,” Nathanael repeated and the boy shrugged before walking away.

I couldn’t help but ask, “Is incest a common activity?”

Lark and Nathanael replied, “No,” in the same sharp tone.

The two of them suddenly looked down the hall. My gaze followed theirs to where Michael strode toward us. His shoulders were squared and his fists clenched. He walked up to his brother and stared down at him as he said, “Where is Sky?” His spoke through his teeth, his jaw tight.

The little red-haired girl pushed past Nathanael and Michael grabbed her by her arm and nearly dragged her down the hall. I watched her go, walking on her toes as the rest of her feet were bandaged in white cloth. 

Nathanael heaved a sigh. 

“Where’s he taking her?” I asked.

Neither of them answered me.

When Nathanael turned back into the room, Lark followed him in silence, and I followed her the same way. “I suppose,” Nathanael said as he began cleaning up the blood that had left drops and footprints on the stone floor. “I need to find the two of you a room.”

“One room?” I asked, knowing Lark didn’t want me anywhere close to her.

“Shut. Up,” she told me slowly. 

Nathanael eyed us suspiciously and shook his head. “If you’re pretending to be my child,” he said, “Perhaps I should know something about the two of you?”

“Who’s going to ask?” Lark inquired.

He chuckled, “You are a Colt…” and shook his head sadly.

There was something very wrong with this family.

“Hey Uncle Nate!” echoed towards us and two younger boys with similar build and dark hair, compared to Isaiah, bound towards us with quick steps. “Dad said you brought your daughter. Is she…” they stopped short of the doorway when they saw me. 

“Aw,” one of them complained. 

“Jonah, Isaac,” Nathanael said as he went to the door. “She is your cousin! Now go tell your father Danica needs a room while we’re here.”

“He’s busy with Sky,” Jonah scoffed. “We’re running out of pretty dishes because her dumbass keeps breaking them all. What an idiot.”

Isaac quickly said, “You would think she wouldn’t get so scared about seeing a woman in her place.” 

Jonah added, “I can’t wait til I’m as old as Isaiah! Then I can get one of my own!” He grabbed his brother in a headlock and spun him around the hallway as Isaac tried to fight him off.

I was tongue-tied. There was nothing I could say. 

“A room!” Nathanael called after them.

They didn’t respond as they went back down the hall the way they had come.

I asked, “What did they mean?” 

Nathanael shook his head and told me, “Pray you get out of this godless place before you find out.” 

He left the room and we followed. Before we were too far from the room he had used as an infirmary, Nathanael turned toward us and said, “I know you’re one of us. There’s no way you can’t be. But he isn’t one of us. And there is no possible way that Michael and his boys will believe that he is yours. You lack the control that they have.”

Lark stepped close to him and said in a very low voice, “I will never be the kind of monster that they are.”

He appeared nervous. Swallowing hard, he said, “You might have to pretend. I don’t care who the two of you are to each other. But, as a Colt, you have to know that keeping a low profile means playing by their rules.”

Lark’s jaw tightened the way that Michael’s had, her fists clenched as well. “I will not subject him to that,” she growled.

“Danica?” I said and she turned slowly. “You do whatever you have to do so I can get you back home. I deserve what I get.”

Lark told me, “I’m not worried about you.”

I held my hands out to her. “I can’t hurt you,” I said. “I never would to begin with, and I have no powers in these walls.”

Nathanael looked at me and said, “What are you?”

“A witch,” Lark and I replied. I looked to her and couldn’t help but smile. She turned her gaze away from me. 

“You might want to keep that fact to yourself,” Nathanael said. “Michael is not a fan of anything other than humans.”

“Well aware,” Lark muttered.

He began to leave again and as Lark went to follow him, I grabbed her hand. She spun around and stepped in close. I looked down and found a knife pressed against my stomach. I let her go. That was my warning. 

“Whatever you have to do,” I told her.

“Keep your mouth shut,” she said. “I mean it this time.”

There was a dining hall, quiet and dim as the rest of the underground. There was a large oak table with chairs all around. I sat beside Lark and across from Nathanael. No one else was in there yet, we only sat and waited. It was eerily quiet in those stone walls. I didn’t understand why there was a table like this. Who would be cooking? Michael didn’t seem the type. I opened my mouth to ask, but closed it without saying anything. I had to listen to Lark. I was vulnerable, and so was she. 

“You’re lucky,” Michael’s voice echoed through the hallway before he entered the dining room. “The boys sacked a deer this morning.”

He and Isaiah brought in a large pot between them and set it in the middle of the table. It smelled deplorable. There were bowls already on the table, but there were no utensils. They scooped the bowl into the pot and it spilled along the table as they took it to their seats. It was a drinking soup. Lark’s bowl beside me smelled putrid. 

“Yours doesn’t want anything?” Isaiah asked Lark. He sat close to Nathanael and stared at her as he ate. 

Lark ignored him. She didn’t seem interested in the food before her. 

I glanced about the table in my silence. Michael and his boys were there, but where was little Sky? 

“Danica?” Michael said sternly. “Isaiah asked you a question.”

Lark looked back at Michael and said, “I have no loyalties to Isaiah. As for the question, he is not allowed.”

“They’re no good for their purpose when they’re weak,” Isaiah said. 

Nathanael quickly interjected, “Michael, do you have an extra room for them?”

“I do,” was the reply. “Small bed. It’s a woman’s cell.” He looked at Lark and added, “I’m sure you’ll feel at home in there.”

Nathanael shot back, “How dare you? Lock your own daughter up, but don’t you dare threaten mine!” There was anger in his voice. I wasn’t sure he was capable of it.

Michael stood. Lark was on her feet before he was, her pistol aimed at his chest. His sons tried to clamber to their feet, their chairs scraping the floor, but Michael waved them to sit. “She’s quick,” he told his brother. “Why don’t you let her stay?”

“Why don’t you send Sky to live with me?” Nathanael questioned, “I can obviously raise her to be quicker than your boys.”

“There’s only one problem,” Michael said. “She uses it as a threat. And if you do it again, Little Girl, I’m going to shoot you first.”

I didn’t think it was a threat. Michael had no idea what she was thinking, and while I didn’t either, I assumed she drew out of habit. It was the pure reaction of defending herself. She stopped herself short, knowing that this wasn’t the place they died. 

“I’ll give you your damn room,” he told her. “Don’t expect anything else.”

Lark sat down and took a sip of her soup, but not much else. She didn’t look comfortable. I didn’t blame her.

“We have an early day tomorrow,” Michael said. “Get some sleep while you can.”

Jonah and Isaac led us to our room. They were grinning to the point that I was unnerved. “This one,” Jonah said.

“Sleep well,” Isaac said.

When we walked in, Lark used the light in the hallway to use the matches on a shelf to light candles around the room. The boys were giggling as she closed the door in their faces. She looked at me as she made her way to the bed and pressed her finger to her lips. It still wasn’t safe to talk. 

The bed was dingy. There was one blanket and it was moth eaten and fairly thin. “It gets cold,” she told me. 

I made my hands into a halo over my head. 

“And yet here we are,” she said. She had a point. We had to stay warm. I didn’t know if I was susceptible to things that she was without my powers. I wondered if this was how it felt to be human. 

Lark began pacing, her boots tapping on the floor. She walked toward me and said softly, “They can walk in at any minute. These doors do not lock.”

I offered her my hands. I was there to do what she needed me to do. I quickly realized that she had been right. She was not worried about me. This was no place for her. And this was no place for the coming events. This was not what I wanted. Especially not like this.

Lark slid my jacket from my shoulders and I froze. It was not romantic. It was not attractive as she pulled my shirt over my head. The air was suddenly colder against my skin. She then stopped and looked at my pants. “Everything,” she said.

I wasn’t sure if I had heard her. 

When she saw me hesitate, she said, “Everything,” again. I complied. 

This was unappealing. I was not excited to be in this position. I watched her as she took the blanket from the bed and gave it to me. Then she motioned towards the bed and I laid down. She took my clothes and stacked them on my on my feet under the blanket. I was still cold.

I watched her in the candlelight as she turned her back to me and slid her own jacket from her shoulders. I turned my gaze to the wall. Unless she wanted my hands on her; unless she wanted my eyes on her, I would keep to myself.

Weight on the side of the bed made me lay very still. Lark’s skin was hot against mine. “If someone comes in,” she said and handed me her pistol. She would eventually sleep. As an angel, I didn’t have to. 

Her back was to me as she settled in, her arms hugging her bare body. “Lark?” I said softly.

“Three days,” she whispered. 

“I’m sorry,” was all I could say. 

I assumed she fell asleep. I couldn’t see her face, but two hours into the night, she began shivering. She hadn’t covered her own feet. She was cold, with no intention of sharing body heat. 

“Lark?” I whispered and she sat up with the blanket clutched to her chest. She looked at me as if there were some kind of danger in the room. “You’re shivering,” I told her.

She laid back down and hugged herself again. 

“Why are we naked?” I whispered.

“You’re supposed to belong to me,” she said. “If any of them come in, they won’t be suspicious.”

“Shouldn’t you be… interested in me?” I asked. “Closer?”

“Not necessarily,” she told me.

“You’re cold,” I said. 

“If I show interest in you, they will use it against us,” she told me.

“You already named me, Lark,” I reminded her. “It’s serious.”

Lark sighed heavily as she rolled over to face me. She had her arms crossed over her chest to keep herself from touching me. I pushed some of the clothes off of my feet and onto hers. 

Within the hour, she fell asleep again. In her sleep, she moved closer to me. Her head moved onto my shoulder. She didn’t shiver the rest of the night. I stayed quiet to not wake her. She would need her strength and I needed to follow without a second thought. 

I closed my eyes. It felt like only seconds had passed when I heard the door open. The weight of Lark’s head was still on my shoulder. I reacted how she had wanted me to. I sat up in bed and shot. Isaiah was lucky I was a poor shot. Isaiah ran. 

Quickly, Lark was on her feet and getting dressed. I couldn’t see her in the dark room, and I wasn’t paying attention as I went for my clothes and Lark took the gun away from me. 

“Good shot,” was all she told me as she ran out of the room. I was running after her. She knew exactly where we were going.

I almost ran into her when she came to a quick halt. I looked past her to where Michael stalked toward us. “What was that shot?” he shouted.

“Your boy came into my room!” Lark shouted back. “I have my right.”

“You are a woman!” he told her. “You have no right!”

Lark’s knife appeared in her hand.

“As for yours,” Michael said and looked to me. “He needs to learn his place! How dare you give him a weapon? You have no authority over him.”

“We’ll show him the ropes!” Jonah and Isaac called and ran towards us. 

Lark stood protectively before me. Again I had put her in a terrible position. There would be nothing in the world that I could do to make up for this. 

“Danica?” Nathanael’s voice came from behind me. Lark didn’t dare take her eyes off of Michael. “Let them go.” 

There was reluctance in her as she stepped to the side. She didn’t look back, only let Jonah and Isaac pull me away. 

They each had one of my arms as they dragged me down the hall. We left the quiet side of the compound and entered the halls filled with screams and sobs. When I saw Isaiah standing in front of an open door, I knew this was the start of something unpleasant. I had shot at him. He was planning to pay me back for it.

“Hi Gabe,” he said. I wished Lark hadn’t given them a real name. Danica could protect her. Being called “Gabe” left me feeling exposed. I wondered if that was what Lark had intended. Had she wanted all of this to hit me personally? No, I couldn’t let myself think that. Lark wanted nothing from me. The night in the bed had proved it. She was just trying to survive. 

I felt a knife strike my back, the barest of pressure, but it pierced my skin and I gasped. I could feel my blood beading at the wound. Was I not an angel in this place?

“Keep walking,” Jonah told me, all the laughter gone from his voice. 

Isaiah stepped into the room, a dark room. I wasn’t surprised. Everything here was dark. I was beginning to suspect a theme. 

At the back wall was a set of shackles hanging halfway up the wall. That was their control. 

“Dogs aren’t allowed in the bed with their masters,” Isaiah told me as he chained my wrists to the wall. I wasn’t going to fight him. I wanted to die here about as much as Lark did. I wouldn’t give these three young men another reason to spill my blood.

Restrained, I realized they didn’t need a reason. I was on my knees with blows raining down on me before I could even think of what to do. My hands were jerked above my head and a closed fist caught me across my face. I grit my teeth and took it. 

Eventually, like any sadist, they grew bored of my lack of screams and left me there. I couldn’t breathe. Every time I tried, it felt like knives pierced my lungs.

I coughed up blood. I looked over my body and saw no light piercing from inside my vessel, only blood on the front of my shirt. 

This was why Lark was not afraid of the dark. She was raised in darkness. It was freedom she didn’t know. I hated myself. 

The door was closed, leaving me to my solitude. I could live through this pain if Lark could. 

Time was lost in that room. I was not hungry, I did not sleep, and yet it felt like an eternity. There was madness to be found in such a place. 

I had closed my eyes. With nothing to see in that dark room, the shadows enclosed around me like a comforting friend. There was nothing to see here. I was nothing. I was not a Colt and thus I was property to do with as they pleased.

The door opened and a little candlelight flickered into the room. It was on a tray that slowly moved towards me; a tray held by a little girl with red hair. This was Sky. Four years old, if that, and so in control of her movements as she walked on her toes toward me. 

The firelight reflected in her Colt-blue eyes as she set the tray near me. It was far enough away that if I tried to reach it, I couldn’t. There was a rag and a bowl and a needle with thread. Medic.

She wasn’t wearing much. A really long button-up with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her father’s shirt? There wasn’t another shred of clothing on her. They weren’t equipped to dress children. 

As she knelt by the candle flame, I could see the bruising on her face. Her lip was split, her right eye darkening. Her own arms were bandaged. What had Michael done to this little girl? His own daughter. She had broken a few dishes. Was that cause for all this harm? 

She looked up at me and it was the empty mask that Lark gave me. I had to look away. A child so small was supposed to smile. 

“Please don’t scream,” she said, her voice soft as she knelt at my side and reached out to my face with a damp cloth. 

I turned my face to her, but kept my eyes closed. 

“Did she give you her name?” she asked me, a hesitant voice that suggested she wasn’t used to talking.

“Yes,” I replied.

“You’ll remember all of this,” she said solemnly. She felt sad for my existence.

This little girl tended to my wounds with the experience of someone much older. She spoke like someone much older. 

“They call you Sky?” I asked and she withdrew from me.

“She lets you talk?” she asked me.

I wasn’t broken, but I realized I might be breaking their rules. Slowly, I nodded.

“The others don’t talk,” she said as she inched closer to me and began dabbing at the wounds on my face. “They scream. All night.”

This four year old girl spoke more than the Lark I knew. She still seemed like she was trying to trust. From the very beginning, she was two people in the same body. The girl that wanted to trust, and the hunter that would always be. 

Tears stung at my eyes. 

“Don’t do that!” she told me quickly and wiped the tears from my eyes before they could fall. “They don’t like that.”

“Taking your sweet time,” I heard and looked up to see Isaiah standing in the doorway. Sky was on her feet. “You like this one, too?” he barked at her and she shook her head quickly. “Then stay in here awhile!” 

He shut the door. I heard the a bar slide into place. 

Sky hit the door with such force, pounding on the surface and shouting his name. “Isaiah! Isaiah! Please! Open the door!” she cried out.

I wasn’t sure what she was afraid of; the dark, or me. “Sky,” I said softly. “I won’t hurt you.”

The pounding on the door stopped. I couldn’t see much past the little candle, but I heard her back touch the door and she slid down to sit on the floor. 

“Will you get in trouble for being in here?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said simply. 

“Even if you were locked in?” I asked.

Again, she said, “Yes.”

When they opened the door, they wouldn’t find her near me. I wondered if it would lessen her punishment. 

As the candle burned, I watched cockroaches come out and skitter around the floor. They had vanished when there was commotion, but now that the quiet had returned, so had they. I heard shuffling from Sky’s side of the room, and then a quick crunching noise. She was eating the roaches. I hung my head. She survived on roaches.

Michael and his boys got to eat fresh meat caught that morning. And Sky scurried around in the dark and ate bugs. It made me angry. 

I pulled at the chains and the moment they rattled, Sky stopped moving. She was so still that, even though I could barely see her, I felt like I was alone. Invisible in plain sight. 

I didn’t hear her move again until the lock slid open on the door several hours later. She was on her feet again when it opened and the dim light spilled into the room. Nathanael was there. I knew he wasn’t there for me. 

He merely looked to Sky and she grabbed her tray, blew out the candle, and ran away. 

“You look like hell warmed over, boy,” he told me.

In my mind, I heard Bobby Singer’s voice. It sounded like something he would say. I asked, “Do you know Bobby Singer?”

“Who?” Nathanael replied and I shook my head. 

“Just a hunter,” I said and tried to sit up straighter. Every muscle ached with stiffness.

“Danica,” he said and drew my attention to his face, “is in a very rough spot because of you.”

“I know,” I told him.

“Why would you bring her here?” he asked.

I stared at him. 

“A Colt like her would not return to a place like this. There are very few of us that leave. Few, as in myself, and whoever she is,” Nathanael said. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted the truth,” I said and felt selfish. 

“You couldn’t handle it when she said she didn’t want to talk about it, could you?” Nathanael asked me. The Colt anger I saw in all of them was rising in him. “You can’t do that to her!”

“I know!” I snapped back. A part of me had once thought Lark was stubborn. I knew better now. I was beginning to think that if we got out of here, I should keep my distance from her. If I let her fade back into the obscurity she knew, then she would be safe. 

Lark didn’t need me. She knew how to survive long before I ever came along. 

“You’re an idiot,” Nathanael told me. “And Danica is going to suffer because of it. Colts have always looked out for themselves. I hope you’re worth all this.”

He left me there. I had put Lark in a bad spot. She had to keep me alive to get home. I was an archangel, not an idiot. I knew everything she had done so far was self-serving. Taking me to Sioux Falls had been to keep me from leading anything to her. She had to sleep sometime. It was better to keep the person that knew who she was close to her. 

As I was sitting in my thoughts, Lark appeared in the doorway. She had her arms crossed as she leaned against the doorframe. “Hey,” she said.

I looked to her and I wanted to smile. I couldn’t. 

“Don’t tell me you’re broken already,” she said without a bit of humor. 

She moved into the room and over to where I sat on the floor. Reaching out, she set a key into my shackles and freed me. I didn’t move. I didn’t want to move.

“Get your ass up, you weepy angel,” she told me. She grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. When her hand touched my side as she steadied me against her, she withdrew it and looked at her palm. “Gabriel…?” she breathed. I almost heard genuine concern.

“I don’t know if I can get us home,” I told her. 

“We’ll figure it out,” she replied and helped me walk down the hall. 

Every step hurt as she nearly dragged me to the infirmary room that Nathanael had used to patch up Sky’s feet. She helped me sit on a tall chair and she cleaned the wounds on my face with a clean cloth and a bowl of water. 

I sat in silence and kept my eyes closed as she moved about me, until she said, “Lift your shirt.”

I did as I was told. There were bruises blossoming all over my chest and ribs. 

“Wish you had an angel around to magic you all better, huh?” she said and I saw a slight smirk cross her lips. Poor attempt at humor. She wasn’t very good at it at all.

Fingertips on my shoulder, she pushed me to lay back on the chair. I looked at her hand as she pulled away from me. The skin over her knuckles was broken and bloody. She tended to me but not her own wounds. “La…” I began and realized I was saying the wrong name. “Danica…” 

She looked to me with her empty expression and I didn’t want to talk anymore. I laid back on the chair and listened to her walk out of the room. I felt a chill of fear run up my spine. I didn’t want to be in here alone. 

Silence ate away at me. There was only the roar of nothing. Then there was the tap of toes on the floor. “Sky?” I asked softly and turned my head to look down at the doorway. 

The little girl peeked in at me. “How’d you know?” she asked.

“You walk on your toes,” I told her.

She looked at her feet and then looked back to me and smiled. How could she find anything to smile about in this place? 

“Sky! Get over here!” someone shouted. Every voice echoed menacingly in these hallways. 

The girl looked at me and waved before running away. A flower in the midst of demons. She didn’t belong here. I didn’t belong here. 

I closed my eyes for a moment and lost time. Had I fallen asleep? Why? 

“Gabe,” I heard, Michael’s voice, and I had trouble opening my eyes. I was so tired.

I saw him standing by my feet and I sat up quickly. My head was spinning. 

“You’re helping the boys. Get up,” he told me. 

I rose to my feet. My only thought was where had Lark gone? At the door, Isaiah met me with a smile. It was a terrible, toothy grin. I didn’t want to go with him. I wanted nothing to do with him. Out of spite, and if I had my powers, I would have destroyed this entire family.

“Time for you to see how men are supposed to act!” Isaiah said. He clapped a hand at the back of my neck and steered me down the hallway. I barely had a moment to glance back when Jonah and Isaac fell in step behind me. 

We walked in silence until I heard sobbing behind one of the doors. Isaiah released me and opened the door. Inside, he flipped a light switch and harsh fluorescents filled the room. My eyes had trouble adjusting, but when they did, I wished they hadn’t.

In the room was blonde woman. She sat curled upon a bed similar to the one Lark and I had shared. She wore dirty rags for clothes and her hair was a mess with blood and all kinds of other grime. She covered her eyes and cried. 

Jonah and Isaac rushed past me, knocking me off balance. They leapt upon her like savages and held her hands above her head. One ankle was already chained to the wall. She had nowhere to go.

She screamed louder than any person I had heard before. My heart pounded in my ears. 

Isaiah pulled me inside and closed the door behind me. He smiled to me before he went to that blonde woman and dropped his pants. 

“Don’t you look away, Gabe!” he told me, putting emphasis on my name as he descended upon that woman, pulling her clothes from her wounded flesh. She screamed as he forced her legs apart and thrust inside her without any regard to her fear. The two younger boys ran their hands over her body, grabbing her breasts and running their tongues over her skin. 

It wasn’t over quickly. This nameless woman suffered until Isaiah was done with her. And when he was, he withdrew from her and he was covered in the blood from her battered womanhood, and his own fluids. 

He wiped himself off with his hand and pulled up his pants. His brothers left that poor woman and ran to the door. They swung it open and were back out in the hallway. Isaiah walked up to me, and with the hand he had dirtied, slapped my cheek. “One down,” he told me.

One down. It repeated in my head. One down. How many were left? There were more? More women were locked in this dungeon, in the dark, only here to satisfy Isaiah Colt? Did Michael still partake? Did they share?

“Come on Gabe, don’t look so sad. You’re lucky you’re a man, or you’d be on the receiving end,” he told me. “Do you let Danica push you around? Is she on top?”

I wanted him gone. I would have snapped my fingers and sent his blood spattering all over the walls if I could. 

“If you didn’t have shit for blood,” he told me, “I’d let you have the next one. But this is my place. This is a Colt place, and you? You’re just Danica’s tool to make a baby.”

“Baby!” Jonah called from down the hall.

“No!” Isaiah shouted and he ran from the room.

The blonde woman looked at me and huddle about herself. He was out of sight and she looked at me like I had attacked her. “Who are you?” she shouted. “Why am I in here? Let me go! Please let me go!” She pleaded with me until I shut off the light and closed the door. 

She started screaming again. What was I doing?

“Come on!” Isaac told me and grabbed my arm. He pulled me down the hall but my feet didn’t want to work. I didn’t want to go. 

In the last room at the end of the hall, a woman moaned through labor pains. There was a baby coming from a long-haired brunette that lay against the wall. At least nine months she had been trapped in this hell. She was filthy, and so was the floor that the child was born upon. 

The labor was relatively short, and when the baby was delivered, Isaiah was there to cut the umbilical cord with a dirty pocket knife. 

“Please,” the woman said, “give me my baby.” She reached out to him with her arms wide open. She couldn’t move far from where her ankle was chained.

Isaiah looked over the infant. It was a girl. A beautiful baby girl born in a dungeon. “No,” he told her.

He took the child with him as he left the room. The new mother cried after him for her little girl. The light was turned off. The door was closed. She started screaming, but this time, because she didn’t know what happened to her. The child had been born with my Enochian spell and, out of sight, she was gone from her own mother. 

“It’s a girl?” Isaac said sadly. “Dammit!”

“Another girl?” Jonah whined.

“Shut up,” Isaiah told them. He then turned, swinging the child by her legs and bashing her body against the wall.

I staggered. I hadn’t just seen that. I told myself this was a dream. He hadn’t hesitated. He hadn’t had a second thought. He had simply slammed the child against the wall and dropped her body to the floor. His brothers then stomped the body beneath their boots. 

I was done. I wanted to leave. I couldn’t wait two more days. We needed to leave. I turned around and saw Lark walking toward me. I felt relief. I could say nothing, but she could. She could wring their necks and be in her right. 

I realized then that she didn’t have anything. She was a female Colt. How had she and Sky even made it past their first day alive? 

“Danica,” Isaiah said quickly when he saw her.

She said nothing, only grabbed me by the back of my jacket and steered me away. I didn’t understand.

“Sky!” Jonah shouted and the little girl came running past us with a bucket of water.

Lark stopped in her tracks. Slowly, she looked at me, through me. She released me and said, “Go help her,” with a voice so cold that I didn’t know what to do. “Go.” she ordered me and I left her side. 

Isaiah and his brothers laughed at me as they walked by with a bounce in their step. I glanced back to see them pass Lark. There was a brief standoff between the two of them, a locking of eyes and a tensing of muscles. She seemed calm, but he appeared livid. This was a woman he couldn’t touch. 

Sky was down on her knees, scrubbing at blood and picking up bones to put in a little burlap bag. Nothing phased her. 

I knelt beside her and she looked at me like I was invading her space. “Help?” I asked.

She reached into the bucket of redding water and handed me a brush. I followed her lead. As I scrubbed, my mind kept going over Lark’s expression. This had to be her forcing me to understand that my hands were bloody in this. Colt blood was on my hands. I was not innocent. This was me literally cleaning up the mess I had caused.

“You’re quiet,” Sky said, her voice drawing me out of my internal anger.

I looked to her to see her throwing a piece of the infant’s smashed heart into the burlap bag. I sat back on my knees and looked at my hands. My fingers were stained red. 

“Don’t look at it,” she told me. “Just do it.”

I wanted to cover my eyes. I couldn’t touch my face. I held my hands out before me. This was the first time the sight of blood got to me. 

“Papa said I was blessed by an angel,” Sky told me. I felt bile rising in my throat. I was physically sick. “He said that was why I didn’t die.”

I stared at her. She was happy to be alive in this place? 

She reached out to me and touched my wrist. A child’s bloody handprint on my arm made me fall still in my human skin. 

“Always have hope,” I told her. “Nathanael is trying to get you out of here. Don’t give up on him. You’ll be free of this one day.”

I looked to her smiling face. Sky Colt’s smile was heartwarming. 

We continued cleaning on our hands and knees. Then I helped her dump the bucket through a grate in the floor. The dungeon had running water. She refilled the bucket from a spigot near the grate and back we went to the cell of the pregnant woman. 

When we went inside and the light went on, the woman was sitting against the wall, covered in blood. She looked up to Sky and said, “Did I have a child?” 

Sky paid her no attention as we set about picking up afterbirth and throwing it into the burlap sack. Then we scrubbed at the blood. There was still a stain, but there were stains everywhere. 

How many children had been born in these rooms? How many of them had been put to death just for being born female?

We scrubbed that room as clean as we could get it and left. 

“Please!” the woman called out to us. “Let me go?” She had no idea what happened.

Sky closed the door behind us. And we set about for clean water one more time.

The blonde’s room was next. I didn’t want to go in. 

Sky didn’t hesitate. 

The blonde was laying on the floor, curled upon herself. She saw us and sat up, still covering her body as much as she could. “You’re just a little girl,” she said to Sky. “Why am I here? Can you tell me? Please? Please tell them to let me go.” She looked at me and said, “You were here! Let me go!”

Sky gave the woman the bucket and walked out of the room, grabbing my hand as she went. 

Outside of the closed door, she held my hand in hers. “Are you scared?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said.

After a moment, Sky asked me, “Are you scared?”

I exhaled, “Yes.”

The blonde bathed herself within the few moments we left her alone. Then Sky retrieved the bucket without me and we left. 

Her little stomach was growling as we walked down the hall. She was starving. I found myself getting hungry, too. 

Down the halls we went until we were in a warm kitchen. Sky started a fire in the fireplace and pushed a pot over the flame. She then retrieved our burlap sack of body parts and she emptied it on the fire. The bones cracked and the flesh seared and melted over the heat. There was a stench that I have never been able to explain. Burning human. 

The burlap sack went to a wash rack to be cleaned later, and she went to the pot with a wooden spoon that I hadn’t seen her grab and she began stirring. It was the same deer stew from the day before. It had been left out all night. Would it make my human body sick? 

I chose to eat, but only when Sky handed me a bowl. We scooped out small portions and sat on the floor. It was tasteless. It was disgusting. It was food. 

Sky suddenly stood up. She grabbed my bowl and the little bit I had left and dumped the remnants in the pot before hiding the bowls. Just as she sat back down, Michael and his son Isaiah came in and grabbed the pot of deer stew. I followed Sky as we stared at the floor. 

Just as quickly as they had come, they left. Sky looked up with her Colt-blue eyes and smiled to me. She was smart. She would survive, just like Lark.

“Come on,” she said suddenly and got to her feet. She still stood on her toes. 

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You have to be back in your room for Danica,” she told me.

My room? Where I had been chained? I followed Sky back down the hall, but she stopped at the room Lark and I had shared the night before. I breathed a sigh of relief. 

Sky opened the door for me and I went to the bed and collapsed on the mattress. 

“Not like that,” she told me. “Your clothes!”

I turned my head to look at her. I was tired, and she was telling me to strip down.

She looked down the hall and said, “I have to go! Bye!” and she ran away.

She was always running. Everything was quick. She was in a rush for everything. Did she still have more work to do? Was I getting off easy?

I jumped to my feet when I heard voices coming down the hall. “Would you consider moving home?” Michael asked. “Sky could use someone like you. She’s soft.”

“I will not,” was the reply. Lark. “She’ll turn out fine,” she told him. There was a harshness in her voice, closed off and removed from him even though he walked beside her.

They came to a stop before the open door and I faced them. I didn’t want to be without my clothes tonight. 

“He’s not ready for you at all,” Michael told her.

Lark glanced to me over her shoulder. This was not the Lark I knew, the Lark that was interested in new things in the outside world. This was not the Lark that was willing to try chocolate cake because I set it before her. This was a Colt. 

“I like stripping him,” she told Michael. She stepped away from him and said, “But if Isaiah or anyone else steps into my room before I wake and disturbs me and mine, I will put a bullet through a head. You will lose a life.”

“Understood,” Michael said. He left then, followed by Nathanael. 

Lark walked in and lit new candles around the room before closing the door. She didn’t like the dark. Her eyes were on the floor until she came close enough to me that my feet entered her vision. She stopped still. 

“Lark?” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. 

I took a slow breath and started to remove my jacket. It was off my shoulders when she pulled it back up. She straightened my jacket and ran her hands over the fabric to smooth it out. Then, without warning, she set her forehead against my shoulder. 

We stayed like that for so long, I wondered if she had fallen asleep on her feet. 

“No…” she said softly and her voice faltered. “No one saves me, Gabriel,” she whispered. “No one comes to save me.”

I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close. “I will,” I said. I don’t know what made me say it. I quickly let her go. I had crossed her boundaries and I withdrew myself from her.

Lark sat on the bed and slowly pulled off her boots. I sat beside her in the candlelit room. There was only one day left. We could make it. All of our hopes rested on Nathanael. We had to get out of this dungeon. I had to become an angel again. 

Lark stirred several hours later. We had fallen asleep together. Her arms wrapped around me in the night and held me close. I didn’t know if it was a conscious action of hers and I would never bring it up, but I let it happen. I was her safety net in this place, and she was mine. Sky had no one to turn to, and as fleeting as it would be, Lark had me. I didn’t expect this to carry on after we left this place. I didn’t expect her to even want me around her after this. I didn’t think I wanted me around after this.

Slowly, Lark sat up in bed. I felt cold when she left me and I pulled the thin blanket up to my shoulders. 

“Gabriel?” she asked softly and my eyes opened in the dark room. 

I had slept. It was worrying me.

“Are you turning human?” she asked me.

“I think so,” I replied. 

“You were sleeping,” she told me.

“I know.”

“We leave today,” she said adamantly. 

“I thought…” I began. We had to make it through the full day. We had one more night in this place. That was what Nathanael had said. I was confused.

“We aren’t staying here another night,” she said.

“I can’t fight my way out,” I said.

“I can,” she whispered. I could almost feel her doubt. 

“We can wait,” I told her.

She shook her head. “You’re mortal,” she replied, “and if you die here, I die here.”

That was the most care I thought I would ever get out of her. In silence, we put on our shoes and left our darkened room. 

We walked into the dining room with that large oak table and Nathanael was waiting for us. Lark sat, but I stood behind her. I didn’t want to sit. 

“I don’t like that look,” Nathanael said.

Lark replied, “What look?”

“You look like Michael when he’s about to start killing things,” he told Lark and she sat back in her chair. 

“We’re leaving today,” she told him.

“I can’t help,” he replied. 

“Can’t or won’t?” she asked sternly.

“It’s not that simple,” he told her. “I need Michael to think I am on his side. I have to get Sky out of here.”

Lark nodded. “At midday, we’re leaving.”

I wanted to know how she could tell. I hadn’t seen the sun since we got here. 

“You could always stay,” Nathanael said.

With a shake of her head, Lark said, “No. I will never come back here.”

“Sky could use a positive role model.”

Lark scoffed. 

Michael came into the room then with his three boys following him. “He’s learning,” he said of me and my position behind Lark. 

“Have fun last night?” Isaiah asked as he leaned forward on the table. “Did we show yours a few tricks?”

Jonah laughed, “No way, he’s weak! He spent all evening cleaning up with the little bitch!”

Isaac joined in, “Are you sleepy?” he asked me. “Too tired to even try, huh?”

The Colts had fallen very far from where I had left them, when I had cursed them with an Enochian spell that made them invisible to the outside world. They were mad. How had Lark emerged from this hell hole differently?

“Go eat with the girl,” Lark ordered me and I left to the kitchen. 

When I walked inside, Sky waved to me and she smiled. Such a smile. She was happy to see me. 

I sat down on the floor and she brought me a bowl of something. When I turned it to my lips, I found I was hungrier than I expected. It was gone in only moments.

She sat beside me, ate a little, and when my stomach growled again, she offered me her portion. I couldn’t take it. I wanted it, but I couldn’t take it. 

I drew my knees to my chest and set my head upon them. How far I had fallen.

“Please don’t leave,” she said softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

I turned my attention to her and she was staring into her bowl as if it were the only important thing in the world.

“You’re the only one that sees me,” she said.

“I’ll come back for you,” I told her. “When I’m stronger, I’ll come back for you.” I didn’t know what made me say it, but I made it my own personal vow. If I couldn’t save this family and undo what I had done to them, then I could at least save one of them.

“Okay,” she said and smiled to me. 

We sat in silence for another eternity and then she turned her head and listened to the silence. She put the bowls away and went for the burlap sack and the bucket of water. Back to work. I followed her to the scene of the crime. Another child had been born, and another daughter of Samuel Colt had been killed. 

I had spent so much time among humans, since before Lucifer’s departure from heaven. I had walked the earth ever since and it was now that I had to pick up crushed bodies of infants that had barely taken their first breath. This was not how the female of the species was supposed to be treated; how anyone of the human species was supposed to exist. 

I was no better than Lucifer, imposing Hell upon this family. And yet, here was Sky…

“What the hell are you doing?” echoed down the hall and Sky grabbed my hand and hurried me into an empty cell, my cell. 

She closed the door enough to look through a small crack. I stood behind her. I wanted to see. Lark strode toward us with her fists clenched. Was it midday already?

“Danica!” Isaiah shouted. 

“Leaving!” she said roughly over her shoulder. She gave him only a cursory glance and kept walking. Was she looking for me?

Isaiah raised a revolver in his hand and cocked back the hammer. “No one leaves!” he said.

I leapt out of the room. Pain ripped through my lower back and I fell. Lark caught me in her arms and kept me standing as my knees buckled beneath me. I held onto her jackets as she pulled her pistol and shot Isaiah. 

He fell to his back and screamed louder than any of the women he had tortured. 

“Time to go,” Lark told me and she pulled me to my feet. She used her body to brace me and pulled me down the hall. 

I knocked over Sky’s bucket.

She ran with me alongside her until she came to an open room. We ducked in and shut the door. The light came on and she lowered me to the floor. I grit my teeth in pain. She stepped away from me and I looked down at the wound through my abdomen. The bullet had gone straight through. 

“How bad is it?” I asked her.

Lark shrugged. “Not too bad,” she replied.

Of course it didn’t look bad to her. 

She knelt down and had me put my hands on the wound. “Pressure,” she said and the harder I pushed on the wound, the more it hurt.

I looked up to her and saw her look about the room. We were in the Colt armory. We had all the guns. She wasn’t looking at the weapons though. 

Absentmindedly, she wiped her hand on her shirt and then looked down. There was a growing red stain. The bullet had left me and gone into her. I hadn’t saved her from it. 

“Dammit,” she sighed. 

We were going to die down here. 

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

Lark knelt before me and sighed. “Not as sorry as I’m going to be…”

I didn’t understand.

She moved my hands from my wound and stuck her fingers in it. I gasped. The pain was sharp and all consuming. The next words out of her mouth were in Latin as she drew a line across her forehead. She touched my blood to her tongue and then smeared the rest over her heart. 

Her teeth grit together as she took blood from her own wound and used her fingertips to draw a line in her life’s blood across my forehead. I didn’t question her, only opened my mouth so that she could touch my tongue. Her blood was sweet with iron. When she rubbed her blood across my chest, I felt a pulling sensation at my vessel’s heart. At my heart.

She clasped her hands together and concluded the spell with our names. My heart beat slow, but there was a second beating that fluttered in my ears like a frightened animal. I looked at Lark as she looked at me with her Colt-blue eyes and I knew. Even though her face was unreadable, that panicked heart was hers.

I looked down at the bullet wound in my flesh and found it healing. I raised my shirt and saw my bruises fading. 

“Time to go,” she said.

I clambered to my feet. I felt better than I had been. I felt like me. I felt my angelic power coursing through me. I looked to Lark. She was still bleeding. I reached forward to heal her and she caught my hand. 

“No,” she told me. “Save your energy til after we get the hell out of here.”

“We have to go,” I said. I didn’t like the look of the blood flowing out of her body. 

I opened the door to the armory and Michael and his sons were waiting for us with guns drawn. Isaiah was bleeding from his chest, but he showed no signs of backing down.

One glance to Lark and I knew we had to hurry. She didn’t look good and she slumped where she stood.

“Thanks for the party,” I said, “but we’ve got to go!” I raised my hand and light flowed from it. I knocked them back into the wall. It was all I had. I couldn’t kill them. They lived through this. I wanted to kill them. 

“Gabriel…” Lark wheezed and her hand fell upon my shoulder. 

I looked at her. This wasn’t just the bullet wound. This was her spell.

“Now…” she choked.

I grabbed her as she used the little strength she had to give Michael and his sons the middle finger. And we were gone.

We returned to her present and she fell away from me. She crawled on the carpet with little strength and vomited blood against the wall. 

“Lark!” I ran to her as she fell over and and lay flat on the floor. “Lark! Come on!” I cradled her against me and used my power to heal her. She didn’t wake. She breathed steadily, but her eyes remained closed. 

Again, I was helpless…


	9. Lark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Stronghold fresh in her mind, Lark finds herself among the Winchesters. She discovers that there are things in her past she had always considered normal, things that, in the world outside of the Colt compound, are more than unacceptable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back on track! (Hopefully!) Sorry for the delay.

Chapter 9: Lark

I could blame everything on the archangel Gabriel. From the time I was born I was cast under his so-called spell of protection. I was invisible to all except the people I was related to. I could have cared less that Samuel Colt was a dear friend of his. He was a man long gone and had left nothing to his legacy but an invisible family that bathed in blood. 

When Gabriel forced me into my own past, I was angry. Yet, when that scent of old blood filled my nostrils, I knew what I had to do. It didn’t matter if I hated Gabriel or wanted to burn him alive, I needed him to get me home. And he needed me to survive in that dungeon. By the end of this, he would know why I chose not to think of that place. I had almost gotten over my nightmares. Now they would come screaming back.

Somewhere in those three days, Gabriel began to turn human. It had to have been the spell that turned us invisible. Nothing had power in those walls but we Colts. In the end, that was what had saved us. I had saved him. Was it for selfish reasons? Partly. I wanted to get out of there. 

Gabriel had saved me. Knowing he was mortal, he took that bullet. I was still struck, but it was in that moment of panic that I knew how to get home. My spells worked. Colt magic worked. And through me, whatever spell I had used, had created, had worked as well. 

I didn’t have long to feel the freedom of the world outside of my own Hell before the everything returned to darkness.

Too much of my strength had been spent and my spell had taken a toll on me. There was no going back, though. I didn’t know how to reverse it. Unconscious, I couldn’t reverse it. 

I had dreams in that darkness. I was a child again, sitting in the kitchen. A man sat beside me, this stranger I would never see again. Time had clouded his face, but I remembered his words. He would come back for me, to help me. He said he would save me. Then he was gone and I held hope for a savior. 

Two weeks later I would try to escape. I tried to run away. I received my first broken rib as punishment. I was alone. There was no one like me and there was no one coming for me. I accepted my fate, my destiny. 

If I wanted to survive, there was no hope for anything better than the nothing I had. I had nothing. I wanted nothing. I was nothing. 

I felt heavy. My chest hurt. I couldn’t open my eyes. I was exhausted. 

I took a deep breath and it hurt to exhale. I coughed.

“Lark?” I heard my name and the floor beneath my head moved. 

I struggled to open my eyes. Everything was blurry. I closed them again.

“Come on,” I heard softly. “Please wake up.”

I took another deep breath and tried to speak. My lips wouldn’t move. I felt so cold. 

I was moved again, curled and held. I wanted to run. Something had me. Someone was holding me still. I needed to run!

“Easy, Lark,” I heard. “It’s me. It’s Gabriel. I’m here.”

That was supposed to make me feel better?

I heard him sigh, “Guess that doesn’t make you feel any better…”

What had I expected? That spell was beyond me. It had brought me everything I didn’t want. It left me with everything I tried to avoid my whole life. 

“When you’re well,” he told me, “then you can tell me to leave.”

It wasn’t that easy. It never was…

I let myself fall back to sleep. The darkness was my companion. I was comfortable there, in the silence. There was no one around me, nothing to hurt me, nothing to worry about. 

I could live forever in that comfortable quiet. 

My cell phone rang. I searched for it in the dark and it wasn’t there. I swore as I paced around. I had to answer it. Bobby would be coming for me if I didn’t. I wanted to be left alone. 

It stopped ringing. I sighed. If I didn’t find it, the Winchesters would be knocking down my door. 

I needed out of this darkness.

The world around me changed. I was outside, standing on the side of the road with redwood trees before me and desert behind me. On that road was my truck. Earl, my companion, my home. The road lay between a dry nothing and a lush forest. I only needed the road. 

I also only needed the Winchesters to not find me laying in the middle of a hotel room with blood on the floor.

I woke up. I opened my eyes and expected to be staring at the ceiling. I expected to be flat on my back, but I was curled and held tight and I remembered where I was. The touch of skin against my own skin made my flesh crawl. I wiggled my toes in my boot and was happy to see that I had feeling. 

My spells didn’t always work the way I wanted them to. That was the main reason I hated using them. 

I tried to sit up and the arms around me quickly let me go. 

“Lark?” 

Turning around, I saw Gabriel sitting against the wall. “Gabriel…” I said.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“I’m feeling,” I said, “like you need to leave.” Then I mumbled, “And I need to find my phone…”

“Right…” he said solemnly and rose to his feet.

“Gabriel,” I addressed him and he stopped. “You didn’t answer my phone and now the Winchesters are probably really close. So get lost so I don’t have to explain why I’m playing house with the Trickster that they shanked.”

There was a whoosh of angel wings and then a pounding came at my hotel door. “Lark!” 

I didn’t have a chance to answer when Dean kicked the door in. 

I was staring at the Winchesters standing in my doorway. I’m not sure who looked more surprised, me or them.

“Lark?” Sam asked.

“Sam,” I replied. I was feeling repetitive. 

“You’re fine…?” Dean asked. 

Sam pointed to the blood I had vomited on the floor. “Obviously not. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“How long has it been?” I asked.

“Three days,” Dean said.

“It took you three days to find me?” I asked. “Damn, I’d be dead right now if I relied on you two to save my life.”

“That’s just ungrateful,” Dean muttered. “We were on the other side of the country and we dropped everything to come help you.”

“What’s with the blood?” Sam asked, a little more to the point.

“Witch was a little stronger than I thought,” I said. I really didn’t like lying like this. I was almost certain they knew that wasn’t true. A witch was nothing. Why had I said a witch?

“So that’s it?” Dean asked. “We’re just supposed to go now?”

I shrugged. “You showed up,” I told him.

Dean didn’t seem very happy. He walked back out the door, but Sam lingered.

“Do me a favor?” Sam said. “Don’t forget to call? We’re trying to help, remember?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Lark?” he addressed me.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll call.”

“If you can call when you’re coughing up roaches, you can call before bed,” he told me and he flashed that million dollar smile. I felt like he was laughing at me.

“What?” I asked. 

“You said you were drunk,” he said.

“Explains why I don’t remember it.”

Sam Winchester smirked. “Bye,” he said and left. He then poked his head back in and tried to fix the door. “Sorry…” was all he could say and the door was left splintered and ajar.

I looked out the window to see the 1967 Impala driving away.

Slowly rising to my feet, I began to pack. “Hey Angel,” I called out Gabriel, “we have to talk, but I need a beer and… a door that isn’t in pieces.”

“I’ll be in the truck,” I heard and listened to Gabriel leave the room and get into my truck. I hadn’t even heard him arrive again.

I threw everything into the toolbox of my truck and hopped into the driver’s seat. I couldn’t go too far. I had a witch to thank for a cockroach reminder. 

We stopped at a convenience store and I picked up a few cases of longnecks and a bag of ice for my rarely used ice chest that was tied to my toolbox incase of rough roads. 

I found a dirt road and a quiet place to stop and I pulled over. 

Gabriel stayed in the cab as I jumped into the bed and pulled out a bottle. The stars would be out soon. I liked stars when I had a moment to look at them. I knew constellation stories and the myths behind some of them from sitting in college lectures when no one could see me. I just could never do any of the readings.

Several minutes passed before Gabriel joined me in the back of my truck. I offered him a beer and he shook his head. I shrugged. If the angel didn’t want to drink, there was more for me. I had to convince myself that the past three days were nothing but a nightmare. I had to tell myself, for my own sanity, that none of it happened. 

But it had happened. I remembered it. I remembered a lot more than I wanted to with that little visit. 

An hour of silence passed before Gabriel opened his mouth. He didn’t say anything, just shook his head again and stared out at the road.

“Stars are up,” I muttered into my bottle. He looked up. 

Again he was quiet. Headlights in the distance caught our attention and, after it passed, he finally asked a question. “What happens to Sky?”

“She dies,” I replied. His attention snapped to my face. “After we leave, Michael and Nathanael part ways. Nathanael is branded a traitor to the family for letting us in there and claiming I was his daughter. Two weeks later, in a desperate attempt to save herself from Isaiah, she tries to run away.”

“He killed her…?” Gabriel whispered. He hadn’t figured it out…

“No… Nearly. You gave her hope, Gabriel,” I told him, “and hope is nice, but not when you’re raised in Hell. Without hope, Sky was gone.”

I looked to him and it clicked. I saw the realization. “She became Lark,” he said. 

I nodded. “I never wanted anything before that day. And it taught me to never want anything again.”

He set his face in his hands and said no more. The archangel Gabriel had cursed me. To survive, I had to become something other. I was a Colt, a monster compared to normal humans. I was a demon of my own Hell. And he was remorseful. He cried.

I finished my first bottle of beer and pitched it out the back of my truck before opening another. The glass shattered on the road. 

I was tired. “Gabriel,” I told him, “if you ever take me back there again, I won’t just set you on fire, I will destroy you, and I will accept my punishment for destroying an angel of the Lord. That will be my sin.”

I looked up to see him looking back at me with those brown eyes. That face. I remembered him from my childhood. Such a kind face. The only stranger that could see me. We had called him a witch back then. 

The disappearance of Danica Colt and hers, Gabe, had upset my brothers. Related or not, there had been a woman in the homestead that stood above them. Danica stood strong and was quick to disagree with what she didn’t like. She had the Colt silence, so quiet and so observant. I had grown up idolizing myself. How sad.

I had, for two weeks, wanted the freedom that Danica had. Now knowing what that freedom had cost me, the trouble I had gotten myself into thinking I could be Danica Colt… Sky would have given anything to be free like Danica. Lark would have given anything to be invisible like Sky. 

I asked myself why. My fears were ground deep into my memory. I was a creature of habit. I hid, I wasn’t a hero. Occasionally people were saved but that wasn’t my mission. I didn’t care about people. I was a hunter. I didn’t know what it was like to not be what I was. Aside from a Colt, I wasn’t anything. I knew I was my father. I would never be able to change that. Yet, there were things about me that made me so different than Michael and my brothers. 

After four more beers, I said, “Gabriel, I need a favor.”

“Anything,” he told me. He was wanting to make up for taking me back to my hell. He wasn’t going to like what I had to ask.

“I need to know who my mother was,” I said.

His response was a jaw-dropped, “What?”

“Can you take me to her?” I asked.

Immediately, his answer was, “No.” Then he corrected himself, “I… might be able to. But didn’t you just say—”

I interrupted him, “I need to know who she was. And you’re the only time traveler I know.”

“How about… you slow down on the beers and we’ll talk about this when you’re sober?” he asked me.

My tongue was a bit looser with some alcohol in my system, but I had drank much more at the bar the night the witch had attacked. I was no where near my limit. “Gabe,” I said and gave him a cross look. “I’ve been drinking since I was five. This is nothing.”

He sighed. “What if you don’t like what you see?” he asked me.

I muttered back, “Yes, because an underground lair of murder and dead babies is exactly what I like to see.”

He held out his hand for my bottle. “You’re a mean drunk, Lark,” he told me.

I downed the bottle and pitched it out the back of the truck. He had no idea how mean I could be. I didn’t want to be, but I was Michael’s daughter. There was cruelty in my veins from the day I was born.

“We just got back,” Gabriel told me. “Take the night to rest and we’ll talk about this later.”

My phone rang and I reached into my pocket and found Sam Winchester calling me. I answered with, “Dude, you were just here… What?”

I could hear Dean chuckling in the background. 

I had never said “dude” before. Perhaps I had had a few drinks too quickly. 

“I…” Sam paused. He cleared his throat and started again. “Have you been drinking?”

“Are you my father?” I shot back. I needed to stop drinking.

“We…” he paused. “We’re still in town. We stopped to get a drink and ran into this witch. I think there’s a whole coven here. Do you want to join us on this one? Maybe we can find the one that attacked you.”

I didn’t care. There were other things to worry about. But I was sure Sam knew that I wasn’t the kind to back down from a fight, especially something that had attacked me first. Perhaps he just thought I wasn’t up for hunting down that witch anymore. I was sure I had looked in disrepair when they had come through the door into that messy hotel. 

I hadn’t realized I had been caught in my own thoughts, but Sam pulled me back with, “Lark?”

“Yeah?” I said automatically.

“Were you coming?”

I said, “Do you want me there?” and Gabriel looked at me as if I had said something crude.

It was Sam’s turn to fall silent. I heard the familiar brotherly bickering and then Dean’s voice said, “Look, we’re really wasting time here. We’re at the Everly Hotel, room 107. Hurry up.” 

Then the call ended.

“Do you want me there?” Gabriel repeated my words and I didn’t understand why it seemed to bother him. 

“I have to go pretend to give a shit,” I muttered as I closed my ice chest and jumped out of my truck bed. 

“So we’re done talking?” he asked me.

I shrugged. He wanted to talk. I wanted to drink and not think about it. All he needed to know was what he saw and that Sky had grown up to be the Colt she was meant to be. I wasn’t far from what my father had wanted me to become. 

As I climbed into my truck, I shouted back, “Are you coming?”

Gabriel replied, “No,” and flew away. 

I looked out the back window after I heard the swoosh of wings and I shook my head. Angels were strange.

My vision was impaired. How much had I really drank? Was it six? Or was it more?

I went to the Everly Hotel. Room 107 was oddly in the back of the property. I parked beside the black Impala and got out. I went to the door of the room and, before I could knock, Dean opened it. 

“Yo,” I said.

“You’re chipper,” he commented.

“I don’t know that word in that context,” I replied. 

“Been drinking?” he asked.

“Are you judging me?” I replied.

“Me?” he asked, offended, “Never. You know, without sin, first stone and all that…”

He opened the door wider to let me in but I didn’t want to go in. Their room was small. There were two of them in close proximity. It would be a losing battle unless I was forced to kill them. Bobby wouldn’t like that.

“I’ll stay here,” I said.

Dean shrugged. “Your choice,” he told me.

I didn’t feel like I had a choice.

“We got a lead on that witch,” Sam said. He walked out of the bathroom with only a pair of pants on. The last thing I wanted to see was a half-naked man. I kept my eyes on his face as he searched through his bag for another shirt. “There appears to be a certain bar that they frequent.”

Obviously… I had stumbled upon it before.

“Why?” I asked.

“Lonely women,” Dean said.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

They looked at me.

“Looking for a good time?” Dean suggested.

I stared at him.

“No?” he asked. “People go to bars to hook up.”

I didn’t know that word either. “To what?” I asked.

“To… each other…?” Sam said, confused.

“What do you go to a bar for?” Dean asked me.

“To drink until I apparently vomit roaches,” I said. “Usually without the roaches.”

“Real roaches?” Dean asked.

“Witches…” I muttered.

Sam then said, “Most people go because they’re lonely. They want physical interaction.”

“They want sex,” Dean said bluntly.

“Dean…” Sam warned.

“She’s not a little kid. You can use your big-boy words, Sammy.”

I wasn’t sure if I liked Dean, but I liked what he said. Sam was… kind. He’d get killed for it one day. 

“What we have,” Dean said, “is a bunch of desperate witches.”

“And we think they saw you as competition,” Sam said. “That’s why one of them attacked.”

“Competition for what?” I asked.

“Really?” Dean blurted.

Sam fumbled over his words. “You’re… pretty, Lark,” he told me. “She might have been trying to get the attention of some guy and couldn’t because you were talking to him?”

“I was talking to…” I started and let my words fall away. I had been there with Gabriel. I couldn’t tell them that, however.

“To…?” Dean asked.

“Some guy,” I finished. “She slipped a hex bag in my pocket.”

“How drunk were you?” Dean laughed.

“Not as drunk as I wanted to be…”

“We need your help,” Sam said.

“Bait, right?” I replied.

Sam didn’t look at me. Dean clearly said, “Yup.”

At least Dean was honest. 

I would help. Why not? It would give me an excuse to drink a little more, to try and forget a little more. I was certain someone would pay for my beers if I wore that green dress I had once worn before. Besides, the witches needed to be stopped. 

I went to my truck to grab my clothes and then took over their bathroom to change. Thigh-high black boots I rarely wore, my green dress, my denim jacket. I tied my hair up in a messy bun and proceeded to decorate my face with ridiculous cosmetics. Sitting in beauty school classes to learn fancy techniques had eventually paid off. It was one of my least favorite past times. 

When I stepped out of the bathroom, Dean could only say, “Whoa…” 

“Twenty minutes to look like that?” Sam asked. “That has to… be some kind of record.”

“Meet me there in thirty,” was all I said as I walked out the door. I didn’t want their eyes on me. Not here…

The bar was rowdy. I was quickly reminded that I really just wanted a night to myself, drinking in the back of my truck and looking up at the stars. I was suddenly wanting to get back in my truck and go to Sioux Falls. But I couldn’t keep bothering Bobby like that. I couldn’t keep going back there. I had to tell myself that Bobby did not want me there. I was never allowed to go back. 

I stood up tall and pressed on. Sam and Dean wanted bait, I’d give them bait. 

I hated that outfit, but a part of me wanted that witch to pay for reminding me of the taste of cockroaches. If this was what I had to do, I would.

I quickly found that I was right about free drinks. It came with a price, however. I tried not to think of all the men that touched me that night. With the nightmare of my past still in my mind, I fought my instinct to withdraw and run. My flesh crawled, but I smiled and chatted. Men had a strange obsession about wanting to teach me how to play pool. I knew how to play. I wasn’t stupid. They stood close behind me, their crotch rubbing against my ass. They liked putting their hands on my arms and my waist and pulling me back against them. Grabby.

I drank even more. I was finding it difficult to even be in there without it. 

I don’t remember Sam and Dean showing up. I was too engrossed in the bottle in my hand. But when a group of women came through the door, I remembered why I was in that hole of a bar in the first place. 

If I were them, I would have done exactly what they did. Sam and Dean were the strongest looking men there. They were quiet, and kept to themselves. They had singled themselves out, and a pretty brunette went to talk to them. She looked familiar. I imagined she must have been the one I had spoken to when Gabriel and I had come to this place. I wasn’t one to remember small details. Especially when I had been drinking. 

I touched the arm of the man that was teaching me to play pool and said, “I need another!” and I left him there. 

The brunette and her friends far behind her eyed me as I approached. At the bar, I ordered a few beers and then I looked to Dean. “Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” he said with his mischievous smile. I didn’t like that smile. It was suggestive. 

I looked to Sam and gave him the flirty grin the brunette woman had been giving to them only moments before. “How are you boys tonight?” I asked.

“Fine, fine,” Dean replied. “And you?” 

“Good,” I said. “Apparently I’m learning how to play pool.”

I couldn’t understand why Dean was willing to play along, but Sam almost seemed repulsed by the idea of talking to me. 

Dean leaned forward. “I can show you a few tricks later if you’d like.”

I grinned. I pushed an amber bottle toward him and touched his hand. “I would like that very much,” I said softly. 

Before I left them, I set another bottle in front of Sam and said, “On me,” before leaving them there to return to my lesson on grab-ass. 

I didn’t even make it back to the group of men I had been talking to when a slim blonde approached me. “Hi!” she said excitedly.

I smiled to her from behind my bottle. I had been in the middle of taking a drink. “Hi,” I said when I lowered it. 

I was halfway between the Winchesters and the pool table. She said to me, “I have got to say, I love that dress on you! And your hair!” She reached out and whisked a strand of my red hair behind my ear. “You are so pretty! I just thought you should know. And you can do so much better than this place. You really can.”

I tried to be nice and say, “Thank you!” but it came out rather forced. It was forced. And I was getting close to my limit. A few more beers wouldn’t hurt. 

I went back to play pool and the man that was teaching me brought me my next beer when I lifted mine and shouted, “I need another!” There had been several ready to buy, but he was already there with an open bottle. I didn’t care. 

I should have cared. I have no memories of the rest of that night, but I woke up alone in a hotel room twisted in blankets. Panic settled in and I struggled with the sheets to pull them off of me. I barely managed to kick them off as I fell off the side of the bed. I was still dressed. I even had my boots on. My hair was still up. 

I crawled around in the dark until I found the bathroom. I turned on the light and quickly shut them back off. It was blinding. My head was pounding. Stooping down, I found clothes on the floor. As I looked through them, I discovered they were my own clothes. I was in Sam and Dean’s hotel room. 

I changed quickly.

Where were the Winchesters?

Clothes balled up in my arms, I went to the door. When I opened it and stepped out into the blinding early-morning sun, I couldn’t see, but I heard, “Morning, Sunshine,” in Dean Winchester’s voice.

I shielded my eyes as he tossed a wrapped breakfast sandwich towards me. I let it sail over my shoulder and through the open door.

“Bad throw,” he said, “My fault.”

I couldn’t move. I was stuck at the threshold like he had my life in his hands. I was confused. I felt threatened. I needed to run. My head was so mixed up between a hangover and fear that I wasn’t sure what to do. I wanted to vomit. I tried not to vomit.

Sitting on the hood of his car, Dean turned his side toward me and said softly, “You can leave if you want. Sam’s out at the library and I was just waiting for you to wake up so I could go inside. I really have to take a leak.”

I had trouble getting my lips to move. “What happened?” I asked.

“Can I pee first?” Dean asked.

I moved away from the door and over to my truck. He waited for me to be out of arm’s reach before he ran inside and into the bathroom. 

I put my clothes in the truck and stared at my seat. I wanted to go, but I had to know what had happened. It wasn’t like I had anywhere to go anyway. 

I sat in my truck and kept the door open. The door was my shield between myself and the Impala. The Impala and Dean Winchester. I had heard about the Impala before I had ever met the Winchesters. Many demons were scared of the car alone, like their own personal boogeymen drove it. 

When Dean returned, he picked up the sandwich that still sat wrapped on the hotel floor and said, “Want this?”

I shrugged.

“Catch,” he said and tossed it over the door of my truck.

It was a sausage and egg sandwich. It was delicious. It brought some of my energy back but I felt almost, anxious. 

“You got roofied,” Dean said as I ate. He sat on the hood of the Impala and set his hands in his lap. 

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Rohypnol?” he said. 

I stared at him blankly through the window of my door.

“The date-rape drug?” he suggested.

“I don’t know that word,” I told him as I kept eating.

“You don’t know what word?” he asked. 

I watched the confusion settle on his face. “Date-rape,” I said. 

“Do you know what a date is?” he asked.

I shook my head and ate the last bite of my sandwich.

“Uh…” His brows furrowed and he crossed his arms. I could almost see the thoughts going through his head. I just didn’t know what those thoughts were. “When…” he began slowly, “two people like each other. They go to a movie or dinner or something fun to get to know each other and see if they really like each other. That’s a date.”

“That’s strange,” I said.

“Date-rape,” he continued, “is when… on that date, someone tries to…” 

He seemed like he was having trouble. 

“When one of the two people on the date try to force the other person to have sex against their will,” he finished strongly.

It was my turn to look confused. I didn’t know there was a word like that. That was simply normal growing up. That was how my family had lived on. Dating was an idea that didn’t exist in my home. We were invisible. Invisible people do not catch the eye of willing participants. 

“There’s a drug that makes people rape each other?” I asked.

Dean shook his head. “No,” he said, “it makes it easier for someone to take control over another person. They can’t fight off an attack. They’re helpless. And then they don’t remember it in the morning.”

“Why would someone make something like that?” I asked. 

Dean shrugged. “I don’t know.”

I wasn’t surprised. My family could bring a woman home and have sex with her and she wouldn’t remember once we were out of sight. It would just be a dark room and a chain on her leg. I couldn’t blame humans for wanting to be invisible. It had gotten my family quite far.

“Lark,” Dean said to draw my attention. He had said my name with enough force that I almost felt like it was my father calling me. I had to remind myself that Dean alone could not hurt me.

“No one has any right to touch you against your will,” he said.

Again, I was confused.

“Rape is wrong,” he said. “I don’t care what anyone says. If someone tries to touch you, and you say no, then they have no right to touch you. In any way.” 

He was getting upset.

“And if something happens,” he told me, “and someone slips a roofie in your drink, and you can’t say no, they still have no right to touch you. Unless you can clearly and consciously say yes, then it’s always going to be rape. And it’s wrong, Lark.”

He was starting to worry me. 

Dean took a deep breath to steady himself and said, “Last night… that guy at the bar must have slipped you something in your beer. You didn’t seem right, and then you sat down. That guy tried to get you out the door with him and Sam and I stopped him.”

I stared at him. I had been drinking. If anything happened to me, it would have been my fault. They had no reason to protect me. 

Something must have shown on my face, because Dean said, “Don’t give me that look. Damnit. I don’t want anything from you Lark. And neither does Sam. No one has the right, whether you’ve been drinking or not, to take advantage of you.”

I wondered if he’d read my mind. His words were too perfect. I quickly realized the only person who could have told him anything would have been Bobby. Bobby knew about my family and their practices. Did Sam and Dean know? Had they been told what I was capable of? What my family had done? 

“How does a word like no stop people?” I asked. “Disagreement rarely stops action.”

It was Dean’s turn to stare at me.

“You can try to fight,” I said, “but crying doesn’t stop someone from taking what they want if they have the power to do so.”

His brows furrowed. He didn’t seem to understand me. 

“It works in your legal system, right?” I replied. “A no can only be brought up against the guilty party under a court conviction. If it never makes it to your courts, there is no justice. And a no is simply a word without power. No solves nothing.”

Dean Winchester stared at me with something I could only describe as disappointment. I didn’t like that look. It was almost the same pitying sadness that made Gabriel cry for me. These people were strange. So easy to shed tears. I felt heartless around them. 

“Hey, you’re up,” I heard and looked past the Impala to where Sam strode toward us. He looked between me and his brother and said, “Am I interrupting something?”

“Nope,” Dean said and shook his head. “Find anything we can use?”

“Well, turns out our witches aren’t just witches,” he said. “We walked right into a Cult of Aphrodite.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I sighed. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Why not?” Dean asked. Almost surprised at my outburst.

“Why would they attack me then?” I asked. 

“Maybe they thought you were pretty this time?” Dean suggested with a shrug.

“She did tell me I could do much better than the men in there,” I smirked. 

“That bitch…” Dean muttered.

“Maybe they want to recruit you now?” Sam suggested.

“Hey,” I shot back and then winced at the loudness of my own voice. “I played bait once. I’m out.”

Sam shook his head. “That’s fine,” he said. “I don’t want to force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

I glared at him. Sam stared back at me like a deer in the headlights. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to stay or run. 

These two were too nice. These two did not act the way other men did; the way I was used to men acting. 

“How’re you feeling?” Sam asked me. “You look a little pale.”

“You look like you’re going to hurl,” Dean said.

I had thrown up in my mouth several times already during our conversation. I wasn’t about to let them know that. Colts don’t show weakness. Illness is weakness. Tears are weakness. We do not show our pain. 

“Are we in any danger?” I asked, “From the Cult of Aphrodite?”

Sam looked at the papers in his hand. “Doesn’t say much. I mean, aside from your roach incident, we haven’t seen anything.”

“Bitches…” Dean muttered. 

“They aren’t hurting anyone,” Sam suggested. 

“Then leave them alone,” I replied.

“The roaches?” Dean asked.

I shrugged. “I try to not hold grudges,” I said. I had wanted to kick that witch’s ass, but I was the only one barfing roaches in town, so it was more of a personal attack instead of a random grab. I didn’t care anymore. My anger was gone. 

“Lark?” Sam said, a soft, gentle voice. He drew my attention to him and I could see his concern. 

There was no reason for me to stay with them if I wasn’t going after the witches. Aphrodite was not the type for war, and these women wouldn’t be on the kill list for wanting to hook up. 

“I’m out,” I said and turned in my seat.

“Hey!” Sam called before I could shut the door. “Be… be careful, Lark. Really.”

“And easy on the alcohol,” Dean told me. “We can’t save your ass every time you get a beer from a cute guy.”

“You thought he was cute?” Sam asked.

“Shut up, Sam,” Dean grumbled back. 

I didn’t know that word either… Cute. I assumed it was an appearance descriptor, but I wasn’t sure. 

I shut my door and got back on the road. There was nothing I needed or wanted from Sam and Dean Winchester. And they were too kind to live much longer anyway. I didn’t want to be around when either of them were killed. Someone would blame me for not doing enough to save them. I wasn’t a hero.


	10. Gabriel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel's jealousy of the Winchesters has gotten the better of him. And, in an attempt to give Lark her space, the truth of the blood-bond is revealed to have more consequences than benefits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a delay in my writing schedule. This was meant to be posted a long time ago, but drama stops the creative processes. I'll soon be at peace without a roommate (no, I won't be a murderer) and living alone, so I'll have more time to write soon. 
> 
> Sorry about the delay :(

Chapter 10: Gabriel

I found it difficult to leave Lark alone. My jealousy had gotten to me. Lark’s easy words with the Winchesters had caused a sudden spark within me. Did they want her there? Of course they would. Who wouldn’t want Lark Colt around? 

I wanted her around. I wanted to apologize in any way that I could for forcing her into the situation I had put her in. I wanted to make it up to her, and she turned right around and asked to go back. Back into that pit where she had been conceived and birthed. I couldn’t, in good conscience, put her back in a place like that. It was a horrible place. But it explained a lot.

I had been able to do plenty of thinking. Her reaction to my fantasy world, her fear when she leapt from the bed and against the wall. She feared me. She feared everything masculine, because she could see what want and desire was capable of. I wasn’t sure if she wanted Sam or Dean Winchester, but I would not let them have her unless that was what she wanted. I had messed up and cursed a family I had considered my friends, and there was nothing I could do to correct that. But I had to at least make it up to Lark. If no one else, I had to make her life worth living. I had to give her a second chance. 

I needed to earn her trust. First and foremost, she had to trust me. I had an idea.

Lark had been through a lot recently. I wanted to be her savior in the bar, but the Winchesters had done well enough. They had protected her, and I was thankful. Sam was trying to hide his wounded knuckles. I was certain Dean would have killed the man if Sam hadn’t taken the first shot. It was Dean Winchester that carried Lark from that bar. 

I watched them take her to the hotel. Or rather, Dean took her in the Impala, and Sam drove Earl back. He couldn’t see me, but I rode in the passenger seat. I didn’t want him messing with Lark’s truck. It was almost comical, watching him try to fit in that seat without adjusting it. He was too tall, and his legs were much too long. Lark was tiny compared to him. 

When they moved Lark’s unconscious body into the hotel and set her on the bed, Sam asked, “Should we take off her shoes?”

“Are you kidding?” Dean asked. “She was just roofied. She’s going to freak out when she wakes up. Just cover her up and we’ll sleep in the car.”

“Right,” Sam said, rubbing his wounded hand.

They left as quickly as they had entered the room and they were true to their word. They never left the Impala until the next morning when Sam left to do research and Dean went for food. But that night, they did make a phone call. 

Sam called Bobby with panic in his voice. He explained the situation and said, “Bobby? What do we do?”

The man on the other end was smart. “Leave her alone,” Bobby told them. “Let her come to you and don’t you dare go into that room until she wakes up.”

Lark was so afraid. She couldn’t even stand on her own feet. I wanted to help her, but there was nothing I could do but watch on as she crawled across the floor on her hands and knees. Her fingers gripped into that carpet like it was the only thing keeping her alive. 

When she left the room and encountered Dean Winchester, she looked as if she would shoot him and run. She was so quick to separate herself from him and give herself an option to leave. The truck door was her divider. 

And then Dean Winchester tried to explain to her what rape was, and I laughed at him. He didn’t know what rape was, not the way Lark did. He didn’t understand her childhood, her normal. Her world did not have rape, it did not have want or free will. She was a second-class citizen in her own life where men ruled and women were barely objects. She had been born disadvantaged. And it was obvious that she had been born in some cruel thought. There were no female Colts but her. I remembered why she was lucky, it was not something I could forget. 

Sky Colt cleaned the bodies of her nieces from the floor for most of her life. I didn’t know how she took it all in stride. Better men had lost their senses at horrors like the ones she had seen. 

When Lark left the company of the Winchesters, I had to go with her. She seemed uncomfortable as she put distance between herself and the two men that had protected her in the bar. They could save her life, but she still did not trust them to be near her. 

I wasn’t sure if she knew what trust was, if she was capable of it. Everyone had always failed her. She had no one to put her trust in. There was no one capable of keeping their promises to her. Even I had failed. I had not saved Sky. I had not saved Lark. She grew up only knowing that Danica Colt was someone she wanted to be like. Capable, able to hold her own against Michael Colt and his demon sons. 

Lark fell asleep in her truck on the side of the road. She didn’t look comfortable curled up on the bench seat, but I didn’t think she would be happy about sleeping in a bed where people waited outside. People didn’t know where she was when she was in her truck. She was just a truck on the side of the road. But a room was a paper trail. 

About midnight, her phone rang and she slapped it before bringing it to her ear. “Lo?” she said.

It was Bobby on the other end, asking her if she was safe. He asked her if the boys had minded their manners. Then he suggested if she wasn’t feeling her best, that she could hide at his place again. 

Immediately, Lark said, “No,” and hung up. She then curled up in her seat with that green dress as her pillow and pulled her jacket around her shoulders. 

Runaway. Such a lost soul. No trust. No hope. No love. No future. Lark Colt was a shell of a human being. 

I had to be cautious about the next time I approached her. I couldn’t surprise her. Perhaps I could call to wake her. I needed a phone. I got one. I called her. 

“Lo?” she said sleepily. 

“Lark?” I asked.

She sounded much more awake as she said, “Gabriel?”

“Can we talk?”

“We are,” she replied. 

“Face to face?” I asked.

She was hesitant. “Fine,” she said. I didn’t like the sound of it. She could say no to Bobby, but she still seemed to have a problem saying it to me. 

I appeared in front of her truck as she was sitting up. She saw me and said, “Damn…” 

I hung up when she did and she got out of her truck. She shut the door and stared back at me in the dark, the moon was just a faint sliver. 

Lark crossed her arms beneath her breasts and was still an imposing figure. Again, she didn’t want me there. 

“Hey,” I said.

She replied, “Hey.” 

I had bailed on her, but I had not gone far. I couldn’t let her be alone. 

“I wanted to… talk to you,” I said. “About your mother.”

“You said no,” she told me. “That’s fine.” 

Lark’s logic was skewed. She was accepting my refusal without a fight. The concept of the word no had not passed her, but she applied it to only herself. There was no want in her, no desire. She was empty. 

“I’m only trying to protect you,” I said and knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment it left my mouth. 

“What kind of protection is that, exactly?” she asked, her eyes narrowed. She wasn’t going to throw it back in my face, but I could see the words on her tongue. I was no savior in her eyes. I never went back for Sky Colt, and because of a little jealousy, I had left her to assist the Winchesters alone. I was not very helpful in her eyes.

“I have something for you,” I told her.

She watched me with sharp eyes as I held out my hands to her and offered my blade. There was only one thing that could kill an angel, and it was another angel’s blade. I was giving her my life. If she wanted to kill me, I would give her the power to do so. I trusted her.

“What is it?” she asked, taking a step back.

“It’s the only thing that can kill me,” I told her.

“You want me to kill you?” she asked.

“If you want,” I told her. “If you don’t trust me.”

Her hands lowered to her side, but they were balled into fists. “You don’t give a Colt the weapon to use against you,” she informed me. 

“If this is what I must do for you to trust me,” I said. “If I have to put my life in your hands, then I will.”

“You’re an idiot,” she told me. Then she said, “I don’t want it.”

“You don’t trust me with you,” I said. “You’re afraid I could overpower you. With this blade, you don’t have to fear that. You can kill me.”

“I don’t want it,” she said again, this time with more force. “With the blade or not, you still have the advantage, Gabriel. You are an angel of the Lord.”

She said it like I had forgotten. 

“Lark…” I wanted her to take it. It would make her feel better. I knew it would.

“I want nothing from you Gabriel,” she said. 

Her phone rang again. She looked at it and frowned before she answered it. “Sam?” she asked. She listened intently to the voice on the other end and said, “On my way.”

When she hung up, I asked, “Winchesters?”

“Witches,” she muttered. She opened the door of her truck and said, “Coming or staying?”

I shook my head and moved away from her truck. I would keep an eye on her from a distance. Unless she asked for me, I would stay away. 

Lark shrugged and got in her truck. She started up the engine and left me on the side of the road. This was going to become a thing we did. 

She went back to the town she had left Sam and Dean and met the younger Winchester at the hotel before dawn. She made it to the door, a pistol in hand, and knocked. 

Sam answered. “That was quick,” he said.

“Everything’s quick when you don’t have to put gas in your truck,” she replied. 

He asked, “What?”

Quickly, she replied, “Nothing. What happened?”

He saw the pistol in her hand and asked, “Are you going to shoot me?”

She said, “Does it look like I have any patience, Sam?”

He stepped out of her way and she entered the room without hesitation. She hadn’t faltered. Even from me, she had kept her distance, but she willingly passed in arm’s reach from Sam Winchester. 

“Everything points to the Cult of Aphrodite,” Sam said. 

“Start over,” Lark said.

“We went back to that bar, to make sure the witches weren’t killing anyone. I went to the… bathroom for a moment, and when I came back, Dean was gone, and so were the women,” Sam said.

Lark frowned. “You called me for that…?” she asked.

“You’re the only one that can get close to them,” he told her. 

Lark crossed her arms below her breasts and stared back at him the same way she had done to me. Distrust. Annoyance. “You can’t call me to be your pawn any time Dean disappears,” she replied. “He probably just hooked up with someone. It’s Dean.”

She was quick to use her newly learned words. 

Sam sat down. He appeared guilty. “I could really use your help, Lark,” he said. 

She sighed, “Walk me through it.” 

Dean had vanished, and Lark was the only one who could get close enough to the Cult of Aphrodite to save him. They weren’t about to let Sam Winchester into their circle, not as an equal, but Lark had the ability to be anyone. She had nothing of her own, and thus she could be anyone as completely as she was herself. A little red and white dress got her close to the women of Aphrodite that night at the bar, and within only a few hours, she had been invited back to their circle. 

It was as they sat down in the living room of their leader that the blonde woman looked to Lark and said, “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Lark replied. 

“You know,” she said, “we caught the man that attacked you.”

“We only got one of them,” a brunette said. 

“Can I see him?” Lark asked. Her brows furrowed. “He should pay for what he did to me…”

The women around her smiled. 

For a woman that trusted none, she had a face that made others want to trust her. People opened up to her so quickly. She had such an innocent face. 

They led Lark downstairs. There was always a basement. Every pretty woman had something terrible in their basement. In the case of the Cult of Aphrodite, they had several confused men. 

The difference between the confusion of the prisoners of Lark’s past and the prisoners of the Cult of Aphrodite, was that when these men saw the women come down the stairs, they were happy. 

They were naked and tied down on tables and left in cages, but none of them cried out in fear. They were happy to be slaves. They were entranced in some kind of spell that made them willing victims. 

Lark had the blankest look upon her face. Nothing phased her any more. 

Dean Winchester was the poor soul strapped to a table. 

“That’s him,” one of the women said and pointed to Dean. They were mistaken. 

Slowly, Lark approached his nude form and looked at his face. He was bruised, but he smiled back up at her like she was the only person in the world that could ever give him happiness. 

“Hey asshole,” she said harshly.

He didn’t recognize her. 

“What’s he on?” she asked.

The blonde replied, “A spell. They’re all under a spell. They never say no.”

Lark turned sharply to them. I felt a pain in my chest as the women before her fell still, panic crossing their faces.

“You’re a witch?” one of the women cried.

“Who touched him?” Lark shouted. She pointed to Dean Winchester and repeated herself. “Who touched him?”

No one answered.

Lark pulled her pistol from where it was strapped to her inner thigh. 

One of the women screamed. The pain in my chest was growing. 

“Who?” Lark said sharply and they started naming each other. 

The women admitted to bruising Dean, beating him. They had assumed he had taken advantage of Lark, he and Sam both, when they left the bar with her unconscious body. They had put a spell on Dean, that way he could not say no, the way that they had assumed Lark had been. 

“So this is what you do?” Lark laughed. “In the name of Aphrodite you crazy bitches just use shit-magic to get back at people you perceive have wronged you?” She touched her hand to her head. “That asshole on the table saved me,” she told them.

They were all guilty, every one of those women, of what Dean had called rape. 

Lark killed them all. The pain in my chest vanished. 

The men were released from their spell. The cries of desire suddenly became confusion and fear. 

“Shut up,” Lark told the men. “I’m the one saving your dumbasses!” 

They quieted down, mostly because she had a gun. Then they saw the bodies. 

“Lark…?” Dean asked softly as he regained his normal consciousness. He looked to the straps on his wrists and said, “All you had to do was ask, Lark. You didn’t have to tie me down.”

She looked to him and sighed, “Dean, if I wanted you, I wouldn’t have to say anything.”

Heat flushed his face and he laughed at her return quip as she untied his hands. She ignored the other men as she searched the basement for clothes. She found Dean’s and took them to him and then let him bother with the other men. She kept her distance as they scrambled for clothes after Dean set them free. They had questions but when they tried to ask, Lark waved her pistol and they shut up and ran away. 

Some of them didn’t even have questions. They had seen Lark with the gun and the witches on the floor and they could only get their legs to run them out of the house. They put two and two together. The redhead with the gun was their hero, but they weren’t about to ask what happened.

Dean did, however. He got as far as, “What—?” and Lark cut him off.

“Not now,” she said. 

He said nothing as they disposed of the bodies on the side of a road with plenty of salt and fire, and then they returned to the hotel. 

Dean got out of the truck and paused with the door open. “Lark?” he asked softly. “Are you coming in?”

I could see her eyes trying to close. She was tired. She had used her magic to hold those women still, but it had not struck her as suddenly as it had in the past. She turned off the truck and looked to Dean. 

“I’ll cuddle with Sammy,” he told her. “You can take the other bed.”

Lark shook her head. She was so tired. 

“You can tell me what happened when you wake up,” Dean told her.

Lark slowly got out of the truck. I didn’t know what was going through her head as she entered that hotel room with Dean Winchester behind her. 

Sam was happy to see them, but when Lark collapsed, he caught her and lay her in bed. “Shoes?” he asked his brother and pointed to Lark’s boots. 

“Shoes,” Dean said and Sam pulled her boots off her feet and set them on the floor. Then he pulled the blankets over her and looked to his brother.

Sam looked at the remaining bed and then back to his brother and said, “Are we…”

“Sammy!” Dean said and held his arms out wide. “Cuddle time!”

“Hell no.”

There was an odd conversation that followed. Dean became serious as he said, “I told Lark you and I would share a bed.”

Sam heaved a sigh and said, “If you start groping me in your sleep, I’m going to kick your ass.”

Dean chuckled as he kicked off his boots and dropped onto the bed. The Winchesters went to bed completely clothed. How Lark thought this was safer than sleeping in her truck was beyond me. 

There were hours that passed as they slept into the late morning. Lark was the first to wake. She sat up in bed, found her boots, saw the Winchesters sleeping, and she laid back down. She looked so comfortable in their company. I hated them. I had been willing to give Lark my life and she didn’t want it. 

She lay on her stomach and pulled the blankets tight around her. Her blue eyes were trained on the Winchesters, but not with distrust. She watched Dean sleep on his side, facing her, but it was Sam at his back that slept with his arm around his older brother. 

Lark drifted back to sleep. Moments after that, Dean tried to roll over and struck his brother. Sam swore loudly and sat up in bed. They began shouting at each other and Lark rose in her bed.

“Shut up,” Sam said and smacked his brother in the chest. They both looked to Lark and became very quiet.

“By all means, carry on,” she told them.

“I’m hungry,” Sam said as he got out of the bed. “Who’s hungry?”

“Is he always awkward like that?” Lark asked as she lay back down. 

Dean smirked. “The Colt called you awkward, Sammy,” he said to his brother.

“Shut up, Dean,” Sam muttered as he put on his boots and left the room, closing the door behind him.

Lark watched him go, but didn’t say anything.

Dean laid back down and put his hands behind his head. “I don’t remember anything,” he said.

“Friggin witches,” she replied.

“Lark?” he asked.

After a moment of silence, she told him what had happened. She left out no detail. Dean pulled his blanket over him. 

She told him what the women had said and he turned to look at her. 

There was something very intimate with the way they looked at each other from across the space between the two beds. They spoke about blood and witches, and the problems with this false Cult of Aphrodite that was just a cover for revenge. 

“My hero,” Dean finally said. His words full of sarcasm.

“You’re lucky I have zero interest in you,” she replied.

“Ouch…”

Lark smirked and turned to lay on her back. Copying Dean’s previous posture by placing her hands behind her head. I was hung up on her smirk, the barest hint of a smile she had given him. Lark Colt had no reason to smile. 

The door opened quickly and Sam walked in with a large paper bag in his hands. Lark had sat up quickly, but seeing it was the younger Winchester, she lay back down. 

“Food,” Sam told them.

“Breakfast in bed!” Dean shouted and held up his hands.

“No,” Sam told him. “That’s my bed. You’re not getting crumbs in it like last time.”

“Lark, tell him you want breakfast in bed,” Dean said.

Lark frowned, appearing to put the words together. She sat up and said, “I have to get going.”

“Already?” Dean asked. 

Lark placed her feet on the floor and started to put on her boots. 

“Here,” Sam said and tossed a small paper bag onto the bed beside her. “For the road.”

Lark paused in her movements, one boot on and one boot off and looked in the bag. She pulled out two breakfast sandwiches and tossed one to Dean.

“Breakfast in bed!” Dean laughed. He held his fist out toward Lark and she hesitantly completed the fistbump that she learned from Sam. 

I had been certain that she was going to leave. There was no reason for her to stay. She sat on one bed with Dean on the other and Sam sat at the table. Sam smiled into his sandwich. 

They ate in silence, only the rustling of wrappers between them. Sam tossed another sandwich to either of them when they finished with the first one, but Lark only stared at it. 

“Only one?” Dean commented.

Lark looked at him and asked, “Am I supposed to eat a second one?” 

The boys looked back at her and then to each other. “You don’t have to,” Sam said, “but if you want it.”

Lark stared at it for a moment and then back to either of the brothers. “How do I know if I want it?” she asked.

All her life she had eaten because she had to. Now there was a surplus and she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with it. Necessity had forced her to eat cockroaches. Now, she didn’t have to eat them, but she wasn’t sure what she really liked. She did know that she didn’t care for sweets, however.

Sam and Dean didn’t know what to say to her. They only watched as Lark opened the second sandwich and took a bite. She sighed, stared at the food and then held it out to Dean. “I don’t want it,” she said.

Dean hesitantly took it from her and Lark began putting her other boot back on.

“Lark,” Sam asked, “why did the witches attack you in the first place? If they were hell bent on making men suffer?”

“Because I wasn’t pretty,” Lark replied, “and because I insulted them at first in a pleasantly drunken state. They were being petty.”

“But you are pretty,” Sam told her.

Lark looked back at him and said, “Dressed like this, maybe. In society’s grand scheme of things, perhaps I fit into that idea of beauty. But I don’t like wearing this.” 

Sam shut his mouth. Dean stuffed a sandwich in his so he didn’t have to say anything. 

She said nothing more before leaving the hotel. She got into her truck and left the Winchesters there. Lark had a habit of leaving people behind. 

The distance she put between herself and the Winchesters was astounding. Another city, another state, a completely different hotel.

It was obvious she didn’t know I was there. She stepped into the room, closed the windows and began undressing. I left. I went anywhere but there. I went to the first place I thought of, Egypt. Sand. Dry deserts. 

The moment I arrived, my heart began to pound in my chest. Not my heart, that second feeling. I heard screaming in my ears, my name. Lark was screaming for me. I went back to her.

She lay on the floor in her undergarments, curled upon herself in pain. I pulled a blanket from the bed and threw it over her. I wrapped her in it as I knelt by her side. 

She was tense, her entire body trembling. I wrapped my arms around her and held her close to me. Something had happened. I wasn’t going to leave until she was okay. 

I sat on the floor with her until morning when she took a deep, steadying breath and tried to sit up. “Easy,” I told her. 

In a frantic moment, she broke my hold and scrambled away from me. She stared at me with her Colt-blue eyes and her distrust of me was back. I kept my attention off of her as I asked, “What happened?” 

“Where’d you go?” she asked softly.

“Far away, when you started getting… comfortable,” I replied.

“I guess you can’t do that,” she told me. 

“What do you mean?”

Lark hung her head, hugging the blanket around her body. “The spell I used in the homestead, the one that healed you…”

“Yeah?” I said, urging her to continue. We hadn’t talked about that. I had honestly forgotten about it. It was blood magic, that much I knew, but I didn’t know anything about the spell.

“When that bullet went through you and into me,” she said, “I felt something…”

“Pain?” I suggested.

Her brows narrowed as she stared back at me. “Power,” she replied. “You were human, and I wasn’t going to die there… so I used a blood-bond to give you the power of the sigils you carved into my bones.”

I stared at her. I had used that power as if it were my own. I had hurt her. I had been the cause of her following illness. I had taken too much out of her in our escape. 

“How do you remove the spell?” I asked, much too hastily. I wanted to take back my words; take back the way they had sounded.

Lark didn’t notice. She didn’t bat an eye. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t know.”

That word from her mouth was enough to cause me pain. I couldn’t look at her. She misunderstood. I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t I that wanted to be separate from her. I was thinking of her. What made her comfortable was me not being around. 

“Is there… a book?” I asked. “Some kind of spell book?”

“It was a last ditch effort,” she told me. “The blood-bond… I didn’t think I was going to make it.”

I stared at her. She thought she was going to die and she chose to save me. Sky was still in there somewhere. The girl that cared. 

“I never learned a reversal for the spell,” she told me. “When my father learned I had the book, he burned it.”

“Where’d you get it?” I asked.

“It was one of my mother’s things. Nathanael gave it to me when I could start forming words.”

I sighed. “Your mother would know, then?” 

“She would.”

“I can take you to her… before she was your father’s prisoner. If you’d like.”

Lark took a deep breath and curled around herself. I realized it then. The reason she had wanted to go back the first time. The front for discovering her mother. That was the only way she could sever the bond between us. She hadn’t expected to survive and she hadn’t expected to be tied to me. 

I was her liability. “I’m so sorry,” I said. 

Lark looked at me with confusion. 

I didn’t think that there was anyone in this world that could make me feel the guilt that she did. I couldn’t even keep her safe, and my very presence around her only made more trouble. 

“We’ll find your mother,” I told her, “And after you break the spell, I’ll never bother you again.”

Lark did not need me. I didn’t want her to be alone, but those of us she knew outside of her solidarity only gave her more problems. The Winchesters made her bait, and I gave her nothing but harsh memories. 

“I need to get dressed,” Lark said softly. Her words were almost hesitant, as if she were trying not to anger me. 

I left the room and stood outside by her truck. Lark’s story was one about a girl and her truck. Her history was in that vehicle. Lark and Earl. It had a beauty and a beast ring to it.

“Gabriel?” I heard. Lark sounded hurt. She sounded distant even though she was standing on the other side of a door.

I opened the door and she was dressed like a hunter. Double jackets, neutral colors. Jeans. Practical footwear. 

“Ready?” I asked.

She offered me her hand. I took it and transported us to her past. Not exactly her past, but her mother’s. We were standing in the middle of nowhere. A dirt road at our right led to nothing in either direction. 

Lark didn’t let go of my hand, she only held it tighter. 

I had picked the right time. I had seen the woman in my mind and brought us to her. Where was she? 

I released Lark’s hand and stepped out onto the road. It was dark out, but the moon gave us enough light to see that there was nothing around us. I turned to tell Lark I was sorry about getting the day wrong, but the sound of a car engine stopped me. Headlights shown over the hill and I watched the car come toward us. 

I stepped back to the edge of the road as the car came to a stop. It was a shiny medium blue 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle. Two door. Gorgeous. The driver’s side window rolled down and a young woman climbed out of her seat to sit on the door. 

“Hey,” she said. “You two lost?”

“I think so,” I said. 

“Hop on in,” she told us. 

I stepped into the back seat and let Lark take the front seat. Lark sat down uncomfortably and looked at the ceiling of the car. “Devil’s trap in the passenger seat,” she said. 

I looked up and saw one painted above me in the back seat. “Back here too,” I said.

“Hunters?” the woman asked. “Usually demons are a little more pissed off about those.”

“Hunter,” Lark said.

“Not-hunter,” I replied. The woman looked at me through the rearview mirror and I added, “Not a demon.”

“Not a demon,” Lark repeated. 

The woman looked between the two of us and said, “What’re your names?” 

“Gabe,” I said.

“Danica,” Lark said. 

“Wren,” the woman said, “Wren Carmody.”

Lark stared at the woman, her eyes narrowed. She almost looked as if she recognized her. 

“Where are we headed, Wren?” I asked.

“Nearest town is about two hours out, I’ll take you two to civilization and we’ll part ways there,” Wren told us. Then, she became a bit more serious, her eyes narrowing on the road before her. “Unless,” she said, “you two are here to see me.”

“See you?” I asked.

“What kind of people show up on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere?” she asked. “Demons,” she added, “Or time travelers.”

“How do you get the idea that we’re time travelers?” Lark asked.

“You’re not demons,” she said, “and you didn’t look like your car broke down.” She looked between myself and Lark again and said, “You’re also dressed a little funny.”

Lark looked herself over. 

Wren didn’t appear much older than Lark. In the dark, I couldn’t see many of her features, but she was smart, and she was quick. 

“So what is it?” Wren asked. 

“Time travelers,” Lark said at the same time that I had said, “Carjacked.”

“I like Danica,” Wren said and then added, “if that is your real name.”

Lark stared at her. She only managed to mumble, “W—What?”

Wren laughed. It was happy and unweighted. She was free to laugh and smile. It made me smile. 

“Look,” Wren said, “time travelers. I’ll buy you something to eat and we’ll see if I’m the one you’re here to see.” She looked to Lark and added, “You’re too thin. You look like you could eat something.” She then yelled at me, “Are you starving her? What kind of man are you?”

My jaw dropped. She laughed again. 

“Everybody is so serious in the future,” she sighed.

We didn’t say much until we got to the town. There was a little twenty-four hour diner that Wren pulled up to. She got out and then watched us intently as we got out of the car. She didn’t trust that we weren’t demons until we could successfully step out of those devil’s traps. A seed of a doubt, but otherwise friendly. 

“Not a demon,” Lark said as we met with Wren and entered the establishment. 

Wren was certainly a hunter. We sat near the back door for a quick escape, and neither Wren nor Lark would sit with their back to the restaurant. They wanted to see the doors. They wanted to see who was coming in.

The two of them sitting side by side, Lark and Wren were unmistakably related. They shared the same red hair, long and and beautiful. Wren had on a little makeup, and Lark only looked a little pale compared to her. Lark had the Colt-blue eyes, but they were the same shape as Wren Carmody’s. The same nose, similar lips. They were so similar, but Wren was so much more relaxed. 

I couldn’t help but smile. 

When the waiter came for our order, Lark ordered very little. Wren ordered a lot, and I ordered a piece of chocolate cake.

“That’s all you’re getting?” Wren asked me.

“He’s a chocolate person,” Lark muttered. “I don’t think he eats anything else.”

“Aw,” Wren chuckled, “a sweet guy.”

Lark groaned. 

“How long have you two been together?” Wren asked.

Lark appeared confused. I answered for her, “We’re not dating.”

“So, a pair of time travelers that aren’t together?” Wren asked. “Sheesh, then this isn’t a casual visit is this? The two of you need something from me, don’t you?”

Neither Lark nor I could speak. I had imagined talking with Lark’s mother would be more difficult. We hardly had to do much speaking. Wren knew so much. 

“Judging by your silence, I’m going to say that yes, there is,” Wren muttered. “What do you need?”

Again, Lark wasn’t speaking. I took the initiative. “There’s a spell,” I began.

Wren cut me off. “No no no,” she said quickly, “I don’t give spells out.”

“We’re not looking for a spell, we’re trying to find out how to reverse it,” I told her.

Wren frowned. “Which spell?”

Then Lark spoke. Only three words, “A blood-bond.”

Wren Carmody froze the way I had seen Lark do so many times. 

The waiter brought our food and we waited for him to leave before anyone spoke. Wren pricked her finger on her pocket knife and drew half a circle on the white table. She handed her knife to Lark, and she did the same and drew the other half of the circle. How had she known?

Wren said a word in a language other than English and the blood on the table turned into a blue circle, and then Lark’s blood burned away. 

“Well,” Wren said, “you’re a Carmody… but you are definitely not from this time.”

Lark glanced to me and I looked back to her. But it seemed neither of us knew what to say. 

“Are you a witch?” Lark asked.

Wren looked back at her and sighed, “Whole family. Hunters, too. And I’m guessing that most of us are dead if you weren’t raised like this in the future.”

Lark looked at her untouched food and seemed very focused on it.

“How did you find out about the blood-bond spell?” Wren asked.

Lark told her what she had told me. Her uncle had given a book to her, it had belonged to her mother, and her father burned it when he found it. She told her, “It was one of the few spells I memorized.”

“But you didn’t memorize the reversal?” Wren asked.

“I…” Lark faltered. Nathanael hadn’t read it to her. She couldn’t read it alone. She seemed embarrassed to tell this woman that she couldn’t read when she had been so open about it to me. 

Wren shrugged. “That explains why you two are here,” she said, “you are bonded and you can’t go anywhere without each other. It’s a terribly romantic idea, but not if the two of you aren’t together. Can I ask… why you did it?”

“He was going to die,” Lark replied. 

Wren smiled. “It’s a good way to save a life,” she said. 

“She did it so I could get her home,” I muttered. Lark’s eyes drifted to me for only a moment, but it wasn’t a pleasant look.

“You understand that spell could have killed you?” Wren asked. 

“Yes,” Lark said. 

It was my turn to fall silent. I had known she had been hurt, but I didn’t think it was the spell itself. I thought it had been because I had used the power inside her, but Wren had implied that the spell itself was dangerous. Lark had known that.

“You’re very lucky,” Wren told her. “Look, let’s eat, we’ll put some distance between us and this place and I’ll go through my book to help set you two right.”

Lark started eating. She didn’t seem to have much of an appetite, even for the little amount of food that she had on her plate. 

When she finished, she stood up and went to the bathroom without saying a word. 

Wren waited until the bathroom door closed before asking me, “What are you? Really?”

“Human?” I said.

Wren smiled and then shook her head. “I meant, to her,” she said. 

“Hardly friends,” I replied.

“You don’t save the life of someone who is hardly a friend with a blood spell,” she told me.

“She probably didn’t know that,” I said, “She’s… been on her own for a very long time. No one taught her that spell.”

“I can teach her,” Wren said, “If you two have the time. A Carmody should never be without.” 

“You’d have to ask her,” I said. I wasn’t going to make any decisions for Lark. I wouldn’t even consider it. 

“She deserves someone like you,” Wren said. “We Carmodys are a close family. We look out for each other. She didn’t grow up with us, it’s obvious by her silence. You can’t get us to shut up.” She laughed. I imagined Lark’s laugh would be something like that. Joyful. 

“You think…” Wren asked, “she might like to visit the family? Or would that be weird? Since the two of you are from the future…”

“Again, a question for her,” I said. I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. She was cute. The anti-Lark. So friendly, even if she had devil’s traps in her car. A hunter with a smile on her face. I wanted to meet the Carmodys. Now that I had a name, however, I could come back if I wanted. I could find the remaining Carmodys for Lark in the future. I could bring her a new family. 

I stopped myself.

I said I wasn’t going to make decisions for her. She didn’t know the Carmodys, and she wouldn’t even trust them if she met them. 

“You’re sad…” Wren said. “Why?”

I hadn’t tried to keep my face from changing. She had seen my thoughts as they passed through my mind. 

“It’s nothing,” I told her. I noticed then that I hadn’t even touched my cake. I didn’t want it anymore. 

Lark came back shortly after that, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand. The food had quickly disagreed with her. She had hardly eaten any of it. 

Wren frowned. “What do you eat in the future that this makes you sick?” she asked when Lark sat back down. She wasn’t expecting an answer. Lark hadn’t eaten, I hadn’t eaten, but Wren had cleared her plate. 

“Ready?” she asked. 

She stood up and she went to pay for our uneaten food, but a man entered and shouted, “Wren Skylark Carmody! Where have you been?” 

Lark had gone for her gun, but paused when we saw Wren cross the distance between herself and this newcomer in a run. She leapt at him and threw her arms around his neck as she pressed her lips to his. 

Lark stared. I stared. Wren Carmody had been in love. 

“I thought I saw that Chevelle pulling up,” the man said when Wren broke the kiss. 

“Don’t you say anything about my car, Mister,” she told him, a flirty warning. Then, as if she had forgotten about us, she said, “Oh, Dani, Gabe, this is my fiance Paul Harvelle.”

Paul was a shorter man of strong muscle. He had a kind face. He was a good height for Wren. I looked to Lark then and realized my comparison of Wren and Paul was similar to that of myself and Lark. 

I was suddenly distracted by Lark whispering to me, “What’s a fiance?”

“They’re engaged to be married,” I said. I wasn’t sure if Lark knew the concept of marriage, but she didn’t ask anything else about it. She might have been comparing it to her twisted past. 

“I didn’t expect to see you out this way so soon,” Paul said as he ran his hands over Wren’s shoulders. 

“Ran into a wayward Carmody,” Wren told him. “She’s in need of a book.”

Paul glanced past Wren to us and said, “Alright. Need an escort?” 

“I wouldn’t be against it,” she said with a loving smile. 

I wanted to give Lark some time with her mother, but I wasn’t going to leave her alone in the car. The three of us went in the Chevelle, and Paul followed us in an old Ford truck. 

Lark was quiet, but Wren talked about everything. Mostly, she talked about Paul. She was so in love. She was happy. 

It was a thirty minute drive to the Carmody ranch. The Colt homestead had been underground and frightening, but the Carmody ranch was above ground and pleasant. The paved driveway to the main house was lined with trees.

The main house had beautiful flowers planted outside. The yard was green and the house was well taken care of. To the left of the house was a large barn where horses peeked out of closed stalls and whickered to the oncoming vehicles. 

When Lark stepped out of the Chevelle, her mouth was parted in awe. This place was so different than where she had grown up. Lark had grown in darkness. Wren had grown in light. 

Paul turned off his truck and went to Wren. “Want some tea for your midnight reading?” he asked.

“If you’d be so kind,” Wren replied. 

When we got into the house, it was dark inside. Wren flipped the lights on to a very normal-looking house. There was something expected when a family of witches came to mind. This was not it. 

“You live here?” Lark asked, her words breathy. 

Wren appeared saddened by her question. “I do,” she replied. “All Carmody’s start here. We stay close as a family. So we can either stay or move on when we’re old enough. My parents still live here and when Paul and I get married, we’ll decide whether or not to stay. It’s a safe place for children…” She glanced to Lark. “May I ask where you grew up?”

“No,” Lark said. 

I tried not to notice the tension in her jaw. Otherwise, she appeared completely relaxed. 

Wren smiled. I knew that mask. It was the same mask that Lark used to hide what she was thinking, but Lark was so much better at it. Lark could flip her emotions on and off like a switch. I could still tell that something was upsetting Wren, however, her mask was not near as perfect.

We walked to the living room and Lark and I sat down on the sofa. It was yellow. Who had yellow furniture? Happy witches. Wren sat across a glass coffee table from us, on another yellow couch. 

Wren looked between us. Her brows drew close together and she took a deep breath and let the expression fall away from her face. She wanted to ask about her future, and the future of the family she loved. She must have thought the worst. 

“What I’m going to do,” Wren said, “is see if I can reverse the spell without killing either of you… Then if you’d like, Dani, I’d love to give you your own book. Maybe… Maybe I can teach you some of the spells? If the two of you have time?”

Lark sat up straight. I couldn’t read the expression on her face. It was something like interest. 

“Let’s start with not dying,” I said. 

“Right,” Wren said, “Of course.” She snapped her fingers and a book appeared on the coffee table. Leaning forward she lowered herself to kneel on the wooden floor and she began to flip through pages. “First,” she said, “what kind of blood-bond did you use?”

“There’s more than one?” I asked.

Wren paused. She stared at her book a moment before looking to me. “There’s three. Only two can be undone.”

A feeling of dread had washed over me. Lark would never be free of me. 

“The simplest one,” Wren began, “is just a bond. You can—”

Lark cut her off. “When he leaves, it feels like my chest is being ripped open.”

Wren stared at her. “Oh… Oh God… um.” She faltered and started flipping through the pages of her spellbook even faster. “That’s…”

“Probably not good, is it?” I asked.

“Um…” Wren said. 

Paul brought us tea. I took my little cup, but Lark and Wren were too preoccupied with other things. Paul set theirs on the table. “What’s wrong?” he asked Wren.

“Hopefully nothing…” she replied with a light voice. She was trying to remain optimistic. 

I glanced to Lark. She didn’t seem very concerned. It almost seemed as if she knew what was going to happen. She was content and quiet. Whatever happened, Lark could cope. She survived one way or another. She would survive this. We would get through this. 

“Did… the two of you exchange blood?” Wren asked.

“Yes,” Lark said. No regret. Straight forward. 

Wren heaved a sigh. “There’s nothing I can do,” she said softly. “I’m sorry. It’s… it’s a specific blood-bond.”

“What does it do?” Lark asked.

“You can’t stray too far from one another,” Wren said. “You protect each other’s lives. You can find one another. It’s a really lovely bond. It’s incredibly strong. But if what you’ve said is true, and this was an accident, I don’t know what to tell you. This is a bond for soulmates or lovers. As a hunter, it is a beautiful bond that can keep your life safe and provide back up. On the downside, if one of you dies, the other can as well.”

“Now we have a problem,” Lark said. She looked at me and I knew what the problem was.

“I’m an angel,” I admitted. We needed help.

Wren stared. Paul laughed, “You’re joking.”

“He isn’t,” Lark said. Paul’s humor faded.

Wren’s brow furrowed. She opened her mouth to speak, paused, took a breath, sighed. She closed her mouth and shook her head. “That can’t be right…”

Lark shrugged. She didn’t have to prove herself to anyone. She didn’t act like she would ever need to. 

“Um…” Wren said again. She brushed her hair away from her face and muttered, “I’m not sure if there’s anything we can do to reverse this. It is much too strong of a blood-bond. And your parents should be proud of you for pulling it off. Many have died attempting spells too strong for them. However, this bond cannot be broken. And I’m afraid of what the consequences would be from removing it from an angel…”

Lark asked, “Can it be suppressed?”

“What?” Wren asked.

Lark said, “I would really like to be able to get away from him without feeling like I’m dying. I’m sure he feels the same. There must be some way to suppress the pull of the magic so that we can continue to live separate lives.”

“What kind of life does an angel live?” Paul asked.

I had something to say, but Lark was quicker to reply. “One where he keeps his nose out of other people’s business.”

I slipped up. I said, “Lark,” in a warning tone. She turned her Colt-blue eyes on me with such ill-intent that I could almost feel her heart in my chest trying to kill me. If looks could kill.

“Wait, what?” Wren said quickly. “Lark? As in, Skylark?”

Paul asked, “You’re from the same Matriarch?” 

“Goddamnit, Gabe…” Lark sighed. 

“Watch it,” I warned her. I didn’t like anyone saying that. Using my father’s name in vain. 

“We’re not just related,” Wren said excitedly. “We’ve got the same great-grandmother!”

“We need to leave,” Lark told me.

“Wait!” Wren exclaimed. “Don’t go!”

“We need to fix this,” I told Lark.

“Perform a miracle, Gabe,” she told me. “I’m done.”

“I can’t counteract your magic,” I told her quickly. “With everything in place, there’s no telling what it could do. It could kill you.” 

I had thought of it. If I had severed her bond with my magic, would the Enochian on her bones react? It was my power that flowed through her, my curse that she tapped into to create that blood bond. I didn’t want to kill her.

“Then have at it,” she told me as she rose to her feet.

Her disregard for her own life was starting to bother me. I stayed where I was sitting. “I won’t kill you,” I told her.

Lark took it in her own hands. She looked to Wren, who was staring at her with an open mouth and her green eyes wide. “Run away,” Lark told her. “Take Paul and run away.”

“Lark!” I jumped to my feet. “Stop!”

She continued. “Stay away from dark alleys. Stay away from forests.”

I interrupted her. “You don’t know what you’re saying!”

“You think I’m stupid, Gabriel?” she shouted at me. I grabbed her arms to try and stop her but she pulled away from me. I didn’t want to hurt her.

“You’ll never be born!” I told her.

She looked at me and my heart broke into pieces. She was steady. She was set. Her mind was made up. If Wren decided now to protect herself from the Colts, Lark would be gone. I would be the only person in the world to remember her.

“I’m your mother…?” Wren breathed.

Paul’s hands were clenched into fists. The love of his life would die.

I wanted Lark to stay.

Lark turned to her. “There are people,” she said, “from the family Colt. They will find you alone, or they will kill Paul one day to get to you. You will die in the dark. You will die afraid in a prison you can’t escape from. If you’re never alone, if you are never in the dark, they will never find you. You don’t have to die, Wren.”

Staring up at her daughter, tears flowed down Wren’s pale cheeks. Lark could not cry, but Wren could. She did.

“C’est la vie,” Wren said softly. Lark didn’t understand. Wiping at her tears, Wren asked me, “Tell me she’s worth it.”

“Let’s go, Gabriel,” Lark said forcefully.

I was stuck between two birds. One asked for death, the other wanted to give life. She only wanted to know her sacrifice would be worth it in the end. She wanted to know that Lark was going to grow up.

“She’s your daughter,” I told her. “But it’s your future. And it’s not set in stone.”

I grabbed Lark’s hand and took her home, to our own time. 

She didn’t disappear. She stood in the middle of that hotel room with no answers. Wren would still be caught by Michael Colt. She would still die in the Stronghold. Lark had changed nothing. 

“Was that the reason you wanted to see her?” I asked as I stood with my back to the closed door. “So you could kill yourself?”

“It’s not killing if I never existed,” she told me, her voice distant. 

I was angry. 

“If I never existed,” she said, “then you would not be vulnerable.”

“What?” I just didn’t understand her. “This is not about me, Lark,” I told her. “This is about you!”

The confusion on her face was plain to see. Nothing was ever about Lark. She didn’t know how to care about herself. No one ever cared about Laura Skylark Colt. Why would they? Unless they were there to hurt her, she was not noticed. I understood then. That was why she thought I wanted to kill her. I gave her more attention than anyone ever had, and she was used to no one ever looking at her twice. Until she met me. I followed her. I hounded her. I was an angel of the Lord that would not give her room.

“Do you think I’m here to kill you, Lark?” I asked.

Her attention snapped to my face. Her eyes were wide. I felt her heartbeat increasing in my chest. I felt each pump slam against my ribs. She was scared of me. After everything, she still thought I intended to harm her. I hadn’t even noticed. She pretended so well. 

“Why did you save me, Lark? I could have died in your past, and you could have just kept living. You could have moved on with your life and been raised with Nathanael as his daughter. You survived that world before. Would it be so hard to do it again?”

I couldn’t stop those words from coming out of my mouth. I wanted answers. 

“I buried those nightmares, Gabriel,” she told me, her words sharp. “I burned those nightmares and then I salted the ashes!”

Something told me she wasn’t speaking metaphorically. “Lark,” I said, “you need to calm down.”

“I’m fine,” she spat.

I had noticed anger was much easier for humans to maintain than any other emotion. However, the moment I noticed her anger, she folded it up and packed that emotion away. Her heart steadied in my chest. 

“We need to talk,” I told her.

“I thought that was what we were doing,” I said.

I had to get through to her. I had an idea how to. I didn’t want to do this.


	11. Lark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lark and Gabriel agree to take things one day at a time. And Lark begins to discover that she trusts the archangel more than she ever thought she would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a new chapter. Because someone left kind comments, I felt like I needed to get this to you wonderful people sooner.
> 
> Just another long chapter. :) I'll keep writing.

Chapter 11: Lark

I felt empty. I had warned Wren, my mother. And she couldn’t even save her own life. Paul couldn’t convince her to stay indoors. No one could save her. Perhaps one day I could find my way back to her past and try again. She had to stay away from Michael Colt.

Standing in that hotel room, I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to exist. Gabriel questioning me was only making everything come to the surface. The world roared in my ears and I just wanted it all to go away. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t save my mother. I couldn’t free Gabriel. I was a pit. Everything that got near me was destined to die.

And then Gabriel said, “We need to talk.”

My world fell apart around me. Gabriel cast me into darkness. My hotel disappeared to nothing but darkness. The walls were gone. The ceiling was gone.

“Gabriel!” I shouted,“What the hell are you doing?”

A mirror appeared before me. I was skeptical as I approached it. It was just a mirror. I looked back at myself. I almost didn’t recognize the person looking back at me. It was the same face I saw when I stood in a bathroom and decorated my face, but this time, I wasn’t putting makeup on. It was just me.

I was comfortable with the person I saw in the mirror, but I quickly realized that the person in the mirror was not happy with me. I curved my lips into a smile but my reflection didn’t budge. She just stared back at me, disappointed. What the hell did she have to be disappointed with?

Knowing Gabriel, my reflection would start moving independently soon. Then she’d talk to me about my life and try to relate. Gabriel was probably thinking that hearing something from myself would lessen a blow, or make me think about the words a little closer.

A mirror appeared at my left, but my reflection was of Sky, my four-year-old self that we had met on our unfortunate trip to my home. Gabriel needed to get it through his head. Stop trying to help me. He made everything worse.

I started out invisible. In about a month, I was now visible. I had seen my father and my brothers alive again. I had worked a case with Sam and Dean Winchester. I was tethered to an angel. And now I knew my mother. Someone lesser would have tried to end it all. Oh, that’s right, I had tried to convince my mother to stay safe enough so that I would never be born.

I wanted to go back in time and prevent myself from ever going into that shack in the woods. I had met Gabriel at the circus, and that was what my life had turned into.

Beside Sky’s mirror appeared another, but this had Wren’s reflection. I didn’t want to see her. She was not me. I was a Colt, not a Carmody. There was nothing in me that was her.

To my right appeared a large mirror. In it reflected my father Michael and his sons. Isaiah, Jonah, and Isaac were at the age we had seen them in my past.

This was what Gabriel wanted me to see? Was I supposed to see what he saw in me? He had no idea who I was.

I decided I would play his game. What did Gabriel see?

Another mirror to my left showed Sam and Dean Winchester. And another after that showed Bobby Singer.

I took a deep breath and walked toward Bobby’s mirror. Reaching out to it, I watched my fingers disappear into the glass. I could pass through it. I went for it, stepping through Bobby’s reflection into a scene of my past.

It was only so recent, that night I had burned the dress in the fireplace. That warm, amicable silence. It was only clips of my time with Bobby. Our handshake. The room I was given. Bobby’s promise to give me my space. My place to hide.

It ended with Bobby handing me sandwiches, the me I watched as if I were watching a movie.

I stepped back through the mirror and it disappeared into the darkness. Bobby had given me comfort. I knew that. I couldn’t deny it but I also couldn’t rely on it.

The next mirror contained the Winchesters. I wasn’t looking forward to it. I could handle Sam and Dean, but small doses. I took the plunge through the mirror anyway.

I watched myself sit down on a chair at the pool table. I didn’t look good. I saw myself slump over and the man that had been teaching me to play pool that night tried to get me to my feet. He hovered over me, kissing me. Anyone else might have thought that I had been compliant. Either that or they weren’t paying attention. But as that man tried to get me to leave the building with him, Sam and Dean were on their feet.

It started quiet enough, just a warning from Sam under his breath as he stood close to the man. Dean stood by his side. They were intimidating to the man that held me, but he didn’t seem as if he would back down.

“Let her go,” Sam said. “No one has to get hurt here.”

The man cradled me close to him and was prepared to fight his way out. I was a prize he had won. Sam drew back and knocked his fist into the man’s face. Dean grabbed me before I fell and he lifted my nearly limp body in his arms as if I weighed nothing.

Sam knocked the man into the wall and Dean called back to him, “Forget it, let’s just go.”

Sam wouldn’t move, he towered above the man.

Dean said, “Hey! Priorities!” and his brother reluctantly followed.

I was placed in the front passenger seat of the Impala and Sam drove my truck to the hotel. As I watched the scene unfold before me, I shouted, “What the hell, Sam? That’s my truck!”

Of course they couldn’t hear me. It was just a memory.

At the hotel, Sam carried me through the door and they tried to decide whether or not to leave my shoes on or take them off. They were severely startled. Then, just as quickly as they had rescued me, they left me alone in the hotel and slept in the Impala.

The memory was over. I was again standing before a mirror that faded. I frowned. I had other good memories of Sam and Dean, I was sure of it. Perhaps this was the only one Gabriel knew of. Or, perhaps, what I thought was a good memory wasn’t exactly good in the eyes of the archangel.

The next mirror was my father and my brothers. I passed it. I didn’t want to go there. Ever. When I moved past it and the image of myself, both mirrors disappeared. The image of my younger self stared back at me and I sighed. Any memory of her was a memory in my hell. But I knew that side. I knew what I had done in that life. There was only so much Gabriel could see.

I stepped through the mirror to see Sky sitting on the floor in the kitchen with the man known as Gabe. The man that had been a trapped angel in those stone walls. Terribly mortal. I hadn’t known that then.

Then, he was just a man that had been held captive. He had belonged to a woman and that was new to me. It made me believe that I could have the same power that my brothers did. At that time, ownership was power. I understood that. I was different than them, but Danica Colt, my future self, had shown me that I could stand up to them one day. I was something.

This little girl, Sky, the one I had once been, gave this man hope as she offered him her own singular meal to sate his hunger. One ounce of hope to keep him alive in that hell.

I stepped back out of the mirror. All that was left was Wren. My mother.

As I stood before her and she smiled back at me with that knowing smile, I wanted to break the mirror. She knew so much and she couldn’t even save herself. How was that smart?

I didn’t understand her. I was furious! Why couldn’t she be happy and just run?

I swung at the mirror and stumbled through it, right back to those last moments in the Carmody house.

“Tell me she’s worth it,” I heard, Wren’s voice.

I wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t worth her death. I wasn’t worth the life of anyone. No one should have had to die so that my worthless life could be saved. A female Colt was nothing.

I stepped back out of the mirror and it disappeared. The blank mirror appeared where it had once before. I stepped in front of it and saw myself.

This was nothing. This was my empty reflection. No past. No future.

Then, she stepped out of the mirror and into my plane. She looked at me and said, “You don’t look too happy.”

I watched her circle me.

“Where’s Gabriel?” I asked.

“Gabriel?” she replied. “Not exactly here.”

That didn’t make sense.

“He’s only seeing what he wants to see,” I said.

“He does,” she said, agreeing with me. It was strange.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“A figment of his imagination,” she replied casually. “I am the image of his voice of reason that attempts to make him think things through when he starts conjuring his own worlds in his head.”

“You’re doing a really crappy job,” I told her.

“I said attempt,” she replied. “He hardly listens to himself. He won’t listen to you.”

“Then how can I show him?”

“Show him what?” she asked.

“How do I show him that I am not what he thinks I am?”

She held out her hand to me. “Imagine what you want him to see. I will let him see it.”

I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I set my hand on hers and took a deep breath. Giving Gabriel a look at my memories was not something I wanted to do, but he had to know. I was nothing. He was an archangel. His life was worth more than mine. I made him vulnerable with my existance. I never should have been born to that Carmody in that dungeon. I never should have survived those first few hours. It was not a blessing to be alive. I made everything worse for everyone that knew me.

The world around me lit like a lamp. There was a projection as my life played before my eyes. Everything I could remember, one quick beating after another. There were parts I left out. Things I didn’t want him knowing, most of those were things I wished I didn’t remember. If he didn’t know them, and I pretended I didn’t, then maybe I could convince myself it never happened in the first place.

Gabriel had shown me who he thought I was: a woman that had hope on her side and everyone behind her.

I showed him who I really was. The Colt whipping post. The invisible girl. The hunter. I had no trust of anyone. No one had ever really given me another option. I wanted nothing, I was nothing. I let him see that everyone always wanted something from me. I let him see that I thought of him and everyone else the same way. Everyone turned on me eventually. It was only a matter of time. No matter what.

I couldn’t kill Gabriel. He was an angel and I was just human. I would not take up arms against him, there would be no use. He was the strength of Heaven, and I was a sack of meat. He was more important than my life, and my life had tethered him to it. I was blood-bound to an angel, and I knew he didn’t like it. But there was nothing I could do short of dying, and he wouldn’t even let me do that.

I felt caged. I felt trapped. I was a dog at the end of my line, squirming to get free of the collar I had around my neck.

The Winchesters were just another threat. I could kill them, but again, they were so much better than I was. They did things for the betterment of others. Things I couldn’t do. Things I refused to do. I was not a hero.

I let him see how much better the world would be without me. Gabriel would be free. Bobby wouldn’t have to worry about a person shutting him out of his own house. The Winchesters wouldn’t have to babysit. And most of all, Wren would still be alive. She wouldn’t die in that dungeon. Paul Harvelle would still have the woman he cared about, and Wren would still have that perfect life. She would have that life that Gabriel had once tried to give to me. A life I didn’t want.

When I pulled my hand away from my reflection, she sighed. “Piss-poor life,” she said. Then she placed her hands in her pants pockets and asked, “What does happiness mean to you?”

I frowned. I had never thought of it. Happiness was nothing to me. It was something that made people smile. I had little to smile about. I had no happy thoughts. I had few if any thoughts that had anything to do with happiness. I knew how to survive and exist, not be happy.

“That’s a sad life,” she told me when I didn’t answer her. “You live for others. When do you matter?”

“I don’t.” I knew that answer.

She frowned. I looked fed up with myself.

“What does he want to do about this blood-bond?” I asked her.

“Mom said there was nothing that can be done,” she told me, “and I hope you aren’t referring to killing yourself.”

I had been.

“Take it one day at a time,” she told me. “Perhaps you can learn to put distance between each other without the pain of the bond being too great.”

“What’s the point?” I asked.

It was strange, staring back at myself, talking to myself. I had to admit, Gabriel had made me confess more this way than I would have just talking to him.

“The point is,” she said, “others value your life more than you do. And they want to see you happy. They have a value in friendship that you must learn to understand. They don’t wish to cause you harm. This society is based on ties of love. Not ties of pain.”

I didn’t know that word.

“Open your heart to possibilities,” she told me. I didn’t know what that meant.

She continued, “Gabriel cherishes you as a friend. He doesn’t wish to hurt you, ever. He will do whatever he can to protect you. But you need to let him. Your fear of him pains him to no end.”

“You want me to blindly trust a being that could destroy me with a snap of his fingers?” I asked.

“You’re only seeing the negative possibilities,” she told me. “Imagine the good possibilities that could come from it. An angel at your side.” She paused and then smiled a mischievous little smile. “What’s the worst that could happen? He kills you and you go to Hell with the rest of the Colts? That’s something you’re well prepared for. Isn’t it?”

She had a point. A very good one. I was so logical.

I tried to fight away the smile that surfaced on my lips. Gabriel had an interesting portrayal of me. I liked her.

“Can I go back to my hotel now?” I asked.

She nodded. “Gabriel will be outside unless you ask for him,” she said.

I didn’t understand why that was a point she needed to make, but the moment her words finished, I was standing at the foot of my bed.

My reflection had more strength than I did. Gabriel’s perception of me was strong and I could hardly stand being in a public area.

The archangel made plenty of mistakes, I didn’t understand why I should trust him. However, he wasn’t without his own sin. An angel with issues.

“Gabriel?” I said in a normal voice and he quickly came through the door, as if he had been praying that I would call for him.

He looked at me with hope. Hope that I saw in Sky’s face when I had gone through her mirror. I wanted to know what he wanted from me. I didn’t understand.

He closed the door behind him, but kept his distance from me. I sat down on my bed. I didn’t feel it was right to accuse him of wanting something. He could take anything he wanted. He did, including lives. I had heard the story of that college town from Sam and Dean, their first run in with the Trickster.

“One day at a time, right?” I said.

“That’s all I ask,” he replied.

We sat in silence for nearly an hour before we left. There was no reason to stay in that town and it was time to be moving on.

Gabriel was quiet in the truck. The music was on but I wasn’t listening to it. I was trying to drown out the chimes that sang in my head. They were loud and annoying, and every once in a while I picked up a sentence or two that I could understand.

“Something wrong?” Gabriel asked.

“My ears are ringing…” I muttered.

He stared at me and then asked, “Chimes?”

“Yeah.”

“Whoops…” he said and the sound was suddenly gone.

“Whoops?” I asked, “What’d you do?”

“Angel radio,” he told me. “Listening to everyone upstairs. It might have leaked over to you… from the whole blood-bond.”

“I was hearing angels?” I asked and glanced over to him to see if he was smiling. He wasn’t. I had been hearing angels.

“Yes,” he said. “Sorry, won’t happen again.”

I was quickly getting tired of that word. Sorry was an annoying word. Just as annoying as chimes in my head.

Driving through the next town, I saw an opportunity for food. It wasn’t until I saw the restaurant that I even felt hungry. How long had it been since I had had a decent meal. I had a strange idea of what a decent meal was compared to most people, however.

I imagined this place would have something sweet for Gabriel. Most restaurants had something chocolate based that he could eat, but so did the Gas N’ Sip.

“We’re stopping?” he asked as I pulled my truck into the parking lot.

“Food,” I said. I glanced in his direction to see him staring at me. “What?” I asked, “I’m supposed to mingle with the commoners, right?”

He smiled. I hadn’t expected that.

“Right,” he said.

I wondered if he thought I had been making a joke. While I considered lives above mine, it was only of those I knew. The rancid cattle stuffing their faces in the indoor air conditioning were nothing to me. If a monster came through the doors and started slaughtering those people, yes I would stop it. I would kill it, but not for them. I would kill it because it needed to be killed. That was it.

“Lark?” I heard and glanced back to Gabriel. I had stopped halfway out of my truck, engulfed in my own thoughts.

I locked up my truck and left it to head inside. I had given little care to how I looked, and Gabriel hadn’t minded my appearance, so I hadn’t changed from our recent endeavors.

People stared. I looked like I was borderline homeless, and Gabriel looked as if he were going to a party. We didn’t look like we belonged in one another’s company.

The waitress sat us in the middle of a crowded room and I regretted stopping at that place. Forks clattered all around me. Gabriel was the one silent figure as he sat across from me, his hands folded beneath his chin. He was watching me with such intent that I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to move.

“You weren’t joking…” he said.

“Hm?” I looked to him with my brows raised.

“Your comment,” he said, “in the truck. You believe these people to be below you?”

I did, but that wasn’t the answer he wanted. “Are you going to preach at me again?” I asked.

“We can’t sit down and eat without arguing, can we?” he asked.

“I don’t think we can do anything without arguing,” I replied.

“How do you want to work on this?” he asked me.

I sighed and shook my head, “Let’s start by not talking about it in public.”

He fell silent and looked at the menu the waitress had left us. I was again reminded why I shouldn’t have stopped at this place. I didn’t know what to eat. Something small. My stomach was weak when it came to this kind of food.

I asked, “Any recommendations?”

And Gabriel replied, “We’ve seen where my suggestions get you.”

I silently went back to my menu. Nothing looked appetizing. I was willing to try a burger again. It looked less dangerous than the one I had gotten before.

I ordered, and then Gabriel decided he wanted two different kinds of desserts. Something called a chocolate volcano cake, and the other was some kind of pie. He also had the waitress bring us beer.

“Is there a word for drinking too much?” I asked.

“Alcoholic,” he replied.

“Words for everything,” I sighed.

My vocabulary had been severely limited growing up in the homestead, underground, without a proper teacher. But once I was out, I was invisible and I learned new words very quickly. Compared to most, I was still behind, but I was trying to keep up.

I didn’t like feeling foolish. I was sure no one did, whether they were hunter or cattle.

Gabriel got his sweets before my food arrived, but he didn’t eat. He stared off at nothing and kept his hands folded on the table.

“Just going to let that sit there?” I asked.

“It’s rude to eat in front of a person without food,” he told me.

“Who the hell made that rule?” I asked rudely.

“It’s not a rule,” Gabriel said, “it’s a consideration.”

“It’s ridiculous,” I muttered.

The people in the booth to my left were staring. I was half-tempted to give them a real reason to stare. I didn’t like people staring.

Gabriel looked to the couple that couldn’t keep their eyes to their own table and asked, “Can I help you with something? Or are you content with listening to our conversation?”

They didn’t like being called out on their behavior and they turned red and snapped their attention back to each other.

My burger came soon and Gabriel said, “Wait, try this.” He stuck his fork into the piece of pie and held it out to me.

“You know I don’t eat that,” I said.

“There are millions of types of sweets,” he said.

“Yeah,” I replied, “and you left a handful of chocolate in my glovebox. By the way, it melted.”

Gabriel smiled innocently, but he didn’t drop the fork.

I took it from him and ate the pie before handing his fork back. It was almost creamy. It wasn’t too sweet. It was delicious. “What is that?” I asked.

“Ah!” he said excitedly. “I got one! It’s pumpkin pie!”He was much too happy about it.

“It’s good,” I told him, and returned to my own food. People weren’t supposed to be excited about food. It was all the same. Only now there were too many choices. I didn’t see the point in trying something new, or something like dessert, it wasn’t necessary.

“Do me a favor,” he said softly, “we said one day at a time, right?”

“Yes.”

“Try something new every day.”

“Do I get to make any demands?” I asked.

He sighed heavily. “It wasn’t a demand,” he told me.

“What was that other word?” I asked. Favor was a new one, too.

“Favor?” he asked. Then he swore, “Damnit…” It was mostly to himself. “I… It’s when you do something for someone out of kindness.” Then he frowned. “Do you know kindness?”

“Out of…” I said and was trying to think of a way I could describe the word. “Regard… for someone else?”

Gabriel was smiling again. Excited that I knew a word.

“Where are you from, Miss?” the man at the table to my left asked me.

At the same time, Gabriel and I replied, “Hell.” Then Gabriel started laughing and it was almost infectious. I smiled as I took a bite of my burger.

It was strange, sharing a moment like that with someone. It had never happened before. I wasn’t used to things like that happening. My solitude prevented it. Smiling actually felt… good.

I was only able to eat half of my burger before my stomach threatened me. I was full, but it didn’t stop Gabriel from offering me a bite of that volcano cake. The thought of it made me nauseous.

He ate so slow. I was done and he was taking small bites, savoring every taste. It wasn’t practical.

Eventually, we left the restaurant. It was only minutes out of the town when Gabriel asked, “What do you want to do about Crowley?”

“Crow…?” I frowned. “I forgot about him…”

“Really?” He asked. “Sam Colt’s tools?”

“You didn’t remind me,” I muttered. “Besides, it’s not like you didn’t have me focusing on a lot of other things besides Crowley.”

“My fault again?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

“Do you have a plan?” he asked.

“Well, there are two ways I can think to go about this,” I said. “Either you go in and blast them all, which you can’t because you’re in hiding, or I go in and you keep watch. If I’m going to die, you just…” I shrugged.

“You’re not very good at plans, are you?”

“I usually don’t have plans,” I replied.

“Of course you don’t,” he sighed.

”Let me go after him,” I said, “I have an idea of what I’m looking for. If he’s bluffing, you just snap right in and zap me out.”

“You know it won’t be that simple, right?”

“Nothing is ever simple,” I told him. “It’s the reason I don’t make plans.”

“You really want to go in like that?” Gabriel asked.

“Do me a favor, Gabriel,” I said and drew his attention to me. “Let me do things my way?”

He nodded.

The next step was running Crowley’s ill intentions up his ass. I wasn’t making a weapon, not for him, not for anyone. I had half a mind to destroy the revolver that Samuel Colt made years ago, but I would worry about that after the Winchesters were done with it. Wherever it was.

 

That night, we were in a terrible hotel in a rural Ohio town. I could hear cows mooing from as I brushed my teeth in the bathroom. Gabriel had his bed, though why I even bothered getting two beds was beyond me. He didn’t sleep. Perhaps it was the idea that if I gave him something of his own, he would stay on his side of the room. I could care less if he watched porn all night, as long as he stayed away from me.

When I walked out of the bathroom, he was watching some medical show. “What’s that?” I asked.

“Doctor Sexy?” he replied.

I was starting to get tired of new words. “Forget it,” I muttered and kicked off my boots before dropping on my bed.

“Need a wake up call?” he asked.

“If you touch me,” I said, “I will shoot you in the face. I have my shotgun under my pillow.”

“Fair enough,” he said.

He was acting different. That much I noticed. I tried to push the thoughts out of my head as I grabbed onto my pillow. It felt strange, trying to sleep in this room with a celestial being. I had to find out how thin we could stretch the bond between us. How far away could we be from each other? It was only for my comfort and privacy that I wanted to know. I couldn’t have Gabriel around me all the time. I would need my space. And Gabriel would need his own space eventually as well.

“Gabe,” I muttered, “turn it down a little…”

The volume on the television slowly went down. It sounded like white noise to me, but he could still hear it.

Before I fell asleep, I thought about Crowley. How would I get to him? It would be difficult deceiving a crossroads demon, but I thought I could do it. How difficult could it be with an angel at my back? Especially an angel that wanted to keep safe what Crowley had. We had the same agenda: keep the tools and the last Colt safe.

 

When I awoke, Gabriel wasn’t there. I imagined he was taking some time for himself. I wasn’t about to bother him. I didn’t want to know what he was doing. From Dean’s story about the first time he encountered the Trickster, I assumed it had something to do with the women he had tempted Dean with. I only hoped he wasn’t using my image as that kind of toy. I almost felt bad for my reflection.

I decided to head down the street to find something to eat while Gabriel was occupied. I was hungry again. It had been a while since I had felt so hungry. I assumed it was because of all of the excitement the past few days. I was running on empty and I simply hadn’t accepted that. I didn’t have to fill up my truck, but I still had to eat.

I walked to the little diner and sat at the counter.

“Rough night?” the cook asked me as he turned away from the open grill to greet me.

“Every night,” I replied.

“Coffee,” he asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t like coffee. I’d never developed the taste for it. I ordered eggs and bacon and a glass of water. I liked water. If I wasn’t drinking water on a normal day, then beer was a great alternative.

When he turned around and began cooking, the smell of the bacon made me salivate. Perhaps there was some kind of food to get excited about the way Gabriel did over his sweets.

“You know,” the cook said. “Crowley’s been looking for you.”

“Goddamnit,” I sighed. No wonder it had been sparse inside. Demons had taken the diner.

“He’ll be here soon, so sit tight,” he told me.

“I’m not upset about Crowley,” I grumbled. “You’d better know how to cook. I’m hungry.”

He turned to me and I could see his surprise. He didn’t know what to do.

“Don’t take your eyes off the food,” I warned him. “You burn it and we’re going to have problems.”

The demon’s threat hadn’t worked. I was not scared of Crowley. I was going to start looking for him, anyway. It didn’t bother me none that Crowley was coming to me. It made my job easier. I was certain that, through the blood-bond, Gabriel would know when I moved.

“Have you turned one of my demons into your personal chef?” I heard. I didn’t look up. It was easy to tell it was Crowley.

“If he burns my food, I’m going to burn him,” I replied.

“I don’t work for you,” said the demon at the grill.

“You’re wearing that apron, you work for me,” I told him.

“I like you when you’re bossy,” Crowley said as he took a seat beside me.

I wasn’t sure how to engage in a conversation with him. I couldn’t hesitate, I had to be quick like Wren. So I glanced to Crowley and looked him over. “You’re a crossroads demon,” I said. “You’re not worth my time.”

He was smiling. “Is that so?” he asked.

“Become the King of Hell and we’ll talk,” I said with disinterest and turned back to berating my demon cook. “Hey, flip that bacon or you’re gonna burn it.”

He did as he was told.

Crowley leaned forward at the counter. “If I became the King of Hell—” he began and I cut him off.

“Stop right there,” I said and pointed accusingly at him. “That’s a big damn if, first of all, and I only said we’d talk about it.”

“Easy on the defenses,” Crowley replied.

“I only do it because well…” I smiled. “You are a demon. I’m not making any promises.” My goal was to keep it light. An intrigued demon was less likely to snap my head off my shoulders.

“Of course,” he replied. “Naturally.”

Naturally… I watched my demon chef burning the bacon and I sighed.

“Do you need him?” I asked.

Crowley looked at me curiously.

“He’s burning my food,” I muttered. “If he can’t be trained, he shouldn’t be out in public.” I felt my father’s temper flaring into my words. I hadn’t meant it, but it was there.

“I agree completely!” Crowley said.

The demon at the grill looked back at him with fear.

“Would you like the pleasure?” the King of the Crossroads asked me.

“I would like some damn breakfast. And if you kill him, are you going to cook for me?” I had turned it back on him and he did not appear amused. “It’s really not difficult to cook bacon and eggs,” I told the cook. “Is there anything you can make?”

“Toast,” Crowley muttered.

I ran my hands over my face and smoothed back my hair. “Seriously? Don’t you get the memories of the person you’re possessing? I’m sure his ass knew how to make bacon. Why don’t you let him go so I can actually get something to eat?”

“Memories are one thing,” Crowley said, “practice is another. Especially for that one.”

I almost felt bad for making fun of the poor demon that desperately tried to remake the bacon and eggs. He cracked eggs and threw down extra bacon, and I just watched. It was difficult to not laugh. Crowley and I, teamed up against a demon, what a day this was turning out to be.

“Got any deals in the works with any of the Iron Chefs?” I asked. I had watched too much t.v. on my last day off.

Crowley thought that one over for a minute and said, “Bobby Flay?”

I whistled. “How long til that one kicks it?”

“He had a special deal,” Crowley told me. “It’ll be a while.”

“Your taste is appalling,” I informed him.

“It wasn’t my deal,” Crowley said. “I’ve got a ten year turnaround.”

“Sounds delightful,” I said.

“Like clockwork,” he replied.

I turned in my chair and crossed my legs. Leaning on the counter, my head in my hand, I asked, “Mister Crowley, what is it you needed to speak to me about? I assume you didn’t come all this way for nothing.”

He almost seemed delighted at my change of pace. “Well,” he began, “you see, not too long after we last met, I suddenly discovered a whole line of souls that simply appeared out of nowhere down in Hell. And, you see, I discovered one of these souls, a… Jonah Colt, squeals. Loudly.”

“Ah,” I replied. I nodded. I had to keep up with Crowley. “I’m surprised,” I told him, “Isaac is usually a little quicker to talk.” I shrugged.

“So you are familiar with the souls I’m speaking of,” he said cheerfully.

“I am,” I replied.

“Then you are familiar with the Colt family,” he said.

“I am.”

Crowley smiled. “Jonah informed me of your connection.”

“Did he now?” I replied. “Interesting.”

“Would you like to tell me who you are? You can trust me.”

I held back a laugh. It wasn’t kind to laugh at the King of the Crossroads. “I can trust you,” I said. “I suppose… I can trust you to be exactly what you are. Which means I can’t trust you.”

“And what exactly am I?”

I smiled. The demon cook set my plate in front of me. I looked from him to the food and then glared at him as I put a piece of bacon in my mouth. He had done good.

“Not bad,” I told him and he seemed relieved. He believed that Crowley would let me kill him if he had done poorly. It was an interesting thought. “So Jonah spilled some secrets, and you come searching for me for… what exactly?”

“He said you can build something for me,” Crowley said.

“And what exactly would that be?” I asked as I cut into my eggs. “Oh, very good.”

The demon cook was beaming with the compliment I gave him.

“A weapon,” Crowley said.

“Mm…” I shook my head as I chewed my food. “No. I can’t do that.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Really,” I said. “How many female Colts do you know, Mister Crowley? I don’t even know how to read.”

He looked at me and I felt like I had the pity of a demon.

“I was informed,” he began, “that with Samuel Colts equipment, you would be able to fashion me a gun.”

“Not a gunsmith, Mister Crowley,” I told him. “I’m lucky to even be alive, did Jonah tell you that?”

“Neglected to mention that bit,” Crowley said.

“Colts kill their female children,” I informed him.

“And you survived how?”

“I would like to know that, too,” I sighed.

“I could give you an answer,” he told me.

I pointed at him and said, “Patience. All Colts go to Hell. My soul’s journey is set, anyway. I’m not going to sell it if that’s where I’m already headed.”

“What’s the harm?” he laughed.

“You have nothing to offer me,” I said. “And I wouldn’t sell it for something petty like the answer to a question that I spend very little of my day thinking about.”

Crowley appeared unhappy. “I’m sure there’s something I can offer you.”

“Not for ten years.”

“I can give you the Bobby Flay special,” he told me.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“You’re a very interesting human,” he told me.

“Glad I could intrigue you. I’ve been trying to keep a civilized conversation long enough so you might reconsider killing me,” I said.

“Kill you?” Crowley chuckled. “I need you to build me a gun.”

“You could always bring one of the other Colts back?” I suggested.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have the ability to do so at the moment,” he told me.

“Another reason to reach for a promotion,” I shrugged.

“Ambitious,” he said.

“Is there any other way to be?” I replied.

“I tell you what,” Crowley said and I felt a deal coming on. “I have Samuel Colt’s tools, you’re the only one who can use them. You make my weapon, and when I take over Hell, you can rule by my side.”

“Too ambitious, Crowley,” I told him. “That makes me reliant on you, and gives you enough power to kill God, or the Devil, or whoever. How does this work in my favor?”

“My power becomes your power,” he said.

“But I can’t trust you,” I told him.

“What does trust have to do with anything when you have power?”

“I’ve looked down the barrel of rifles my entire life,” I told him. “I know what it’s like to have to watch my back. It’s tiresome.”

“And now we’re on to serious conversation,” he sighed.

“Can’t have fun all the time, can we?” I asked.

“What life are you living?” he asked me, “It sounds so… boring. Live it up, you’re going to Hell anyway.”

I laughed; a short, quick sound, and I shook my head. “Amazing logic.”

“You might as well earn your place,” he said.

“Not killing God,” I told him.

“Your food is getting cold,” the demon cook told me.

I looked down and realized I had become so engulfed in my conversation with Crowley that I forgot my food. I started eating again.

“You’re going to make me force you to build that gun, aren’t you?” Crowley asked.

“You can try,” I told him. “I’m a Colt. Aside from Jonah, we don’t break easily.”

“I’m sure I can convince you,” he said. “The souls of your entire family are in my reach.”

“Have fun with the Colts, they mean nothing to me,” I said.

“Jonah gave me an interesting name. Wren Carmody? Does that mean anything to you?”

I frowned. I tried to keep my heart from beating too loudly. How did Wren end up in Hell? It wasn’t fair! I looked back at Crowley with my brows furrowed and I said, “No. Is it supposed to?”

“The soul of your mother resides in Hell,” he told me.

“Huh…” I said. I shrugged. “Never met the woman. I heard she died giving birth to me.”

Rage crossed Crowley’s face. He had nothing on me. He had nothing to hold against me. I was in for it. I needed to get away before he decided to steal me away. I didn’t know how far I could go without Gabriel’s presence.

Finishing my food, I pushed away my plate and finished off my water. “If you will excuse me gentlemen,” I told them as I rose to my feet. “I have to be on my way. Pleasure seeing you again, Crowley.”

“And you, Laura,” he said.

“Please,” I told him, “call me Lark. All my friends call me Lark.”

 

Crowley let me go. I maintained my composure as I left the cafe and returned to my hotel. I assumed that if he hadn’t caught me at that moment, he wasn’t coming for me just yet. I had time to settle myself and work on my own plan.

When I got to the room, I locked the door and began drawing warding symbols on all four walls. The demons, hopefully, wouldn’t be able to get to me in there. I wondered if Crowley knew about the symbols, would he get offended?

Turning to my bed, I looked around. Gabriel still wasn’t there.

“Hey Gabe?” I said aloud. “If you’re safe, can you send me a sign?”

I turned about and found a daisy flower on my pillow.

“Okay…” I muttered. “Awkward. Carry on then.”

I laid down on my bed and took the flower in my fingers. Flowers. Who gives a person a flower? And why? It smelled sweet. Of course it did. It had come from Gabriel. The King of Sweet. Food. Sweet food.

Curling up. I turned on the television. It was only then that I realized, demons might not have been able to see me, but they could see my truck.

“Dammit,” I swore and got back to my feet.

As I opened the hotel door, I wished I hadn’t.

“You only have so many options,” Crowley said as he stood leaning against my truck.

“Mr. Crowley,” I said, “I am well aware of my options. But as I told you before, unless you become the King of Hell, you are not one of my options.”

Crowley was smiling. “I would really hate to have to torture you,” he said.

I scoffed. “Right. Of course you would,” I said.

“I’m offended,” Crowley scoffed, “You think the worst of me.”

Shoving my hands into my pockets, I had an idea. “Let’s make a deal, you and I.”

He was intrigued.

“Not that kind of deal,” I muttered.

“Is there another kind?”

“Just an agreement between friends,” I told him. “Off the books.”

“Off the books?” he chuckled. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“That’s where all the fun is,” I said. “It’s more of a challenge. I’m sure you enjoy a good challenge.”

“What did you have in mind?” he asked.

I’d caught him. This wasn’t going to be a problem.

“I’ll give you five days,” I said. “Feel free to try to persuade me anyway you can. At the end of five days. If you still don’t have a God-killing gun, then I get Samuel Colt’s stuff and we just part ways.”

“You said it yourself,” he told me, “Real Colts don’t break. You could give me more than five days.”

“I’ll give you seven,” I said. “That’s it. That should be more than enough.”

Crowley grinned. “You’re giving me a lot of credit,” he told me, “I believe, more than I’m worth.”

“I have faith in you, Crowley,” I said sarcastically.

He seemed confused for a moment. More than unsure whether I was rooting for him or planning against him. Demons could only be demons, but humans have always had the free will to play either side. The more distracted Crowley was, the less he would be focused on obtaining what he wanted.

“Challenge accepted,” he said and held out his hand.

I stood facing Crowley with a smile on my face. Seven days with him would be nothing. I bore the hell of the Colt Stronghold my entire life. There was nothing that would make me talk. Crowley was sure I would make his gun. And I was sure I would not. It was time to see who was more determined.

“I’d like to make a request,” I said, watching his hand.

“And would would that be?” he asked.

“Can we stay close to my truck? If you can see it through the window, that’d be great.”

“You think someone is going to steal your truck?” he asked.

“Hey,” I warned him. “I like my truck. A lot.”

Finally. We shook on it.

Crowley was accommodating. We were at some distance, but I could still look up and out of a dirty window in his abandoned warehouse and see Earl waiting for me. But only if I squinted.

That first few hours on my knees was a quick reminder that I had become soft. Crowley wasted no time taking a whip to my back. With each swing, he took flesh. The first strike made me scream. It had been so long since I had felt this kind of pain. It bit through my shirt. I had been lucky enough to lay aside my jacket to preserve it. I liked that jacket.

By nightfall, I was numb. It was almost like standing under a blistering hot shower. My nerve endings were dead. My heart slowed into a slightly elevated rhythm. And I was quiet.

When he realized a whip wouldn’t work, he took to ripping off my finger and toenails. The first two hurt from the change in pain, and I screamed again. But then I let myself drift away. I put my mind in the Stronghold. I imagined the worse things Isaiah had done. Crowley was very similar, but no worse.

Demons don’t need to sleep, and they didn’t let me. Alcohol on open wounds was a nice late night touch. Crowley would take a drink and then offer me one that ran down my back and into every lashing.

I thrashed in the chains that held me. It was an automatic response. There was pain that could be sat through, that my body said, “oh well,” and then there was pain that I tried to run from, like stubbing my toe.

Early morning came and I looked out to see my truck. Earl was still waiting for me, and Crowley had tried everything short of setting me on fire.

When one of Crowley’s demons had tried to put his hands between my legs, I laughed, “Come on Crowley. Rape is a weak man’s game.”

Crowley nearly threw his lower demon across the room. Isaiah had once said that sex was not torture. My father agreed. I was the only one seeing it from the other side. There was no worse torture I could think of, but I was glad Crowley had been upset by my humor.

The rest of that day, the King of the Crossroads let me kneel and bleed. I felt nothing. I sat in my own mind and let myself feel nothing.

About midnight, I began wondering if I had been forgotten, or if Crowley had run out of ideas. My adrenaline had slowed. I was tired that night, only the second night.I was drifting off to sleep when I heard footsteps. It wasn’t Crowley’s dignified walk, but someone else.

It was the demon that had touched me, or tried to.

“Crowley’s going easy on you,” he told me.

“I thought so,” I replied, “Any idea why?”

“He likes your body in one piece,” he said.

“Is that so?”

He knelt at my side. “I can see why,” he told me as his fingers gently touched my hand.

I saw his attack coming, but the chains didn’t let me get far enough away. I tried to pull away, but he grabbed my hand and severed it from my wrist with a quick hack of a large knife.

There is nothing a human body can do to prepare for sudden amputation. Every scream before that was nothing. The shock of blood pouring out a bloody stump and that demon sucking on the fingers of my removed hand made a sound come out of me that I wasn’t able to control.

Gabriel appeared.

In my choking pain, I yelled at him to leave. I didn’t need Crowley knowing I had back up.

Gabriel wasn’t listening. He went after the demon with my hand. The demon backed away from him, dropping my hand. In an instant, my hand was back on my wrist and that hand was out of its shackle.

Then Gabriel was gone. I was happy he left me, but at the same time, I wanted to go with him.

If he hadn’t given me my hand back, I might’ve died, or worse, started talking.

Crowley entered the room, visibly upset.

“Angel!” shouted his lesser demon.

I held up my hand to show Crowley it was free.

“What the hell?” Crowley asked. His confusion was priceless.

“He chopped off my hand!” I told him.

“How is it back on?” Crowley asked.

“I’m from a long line of witches, Crowley,” I said. “You don’t think I picked up something just by being blood. I’ve got magic… somewhere.”

“Somewhere?” he scoffed. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He just saw me reattach my hand,” I said. “I think it fried him.”

Crowley then looked at me differently. “You can use magic?” he asked.

“You sound surprised,” I muttered.

“Carmody magic?” he asked.

“A little,” I said skeptically. I didn’t know what he was getting at.

I wondered if Crowley knew the Carmodys better than I did.

Crowley seemed to think that magic changed the game. It didn’t. Gabriel had.

For the first three days, I had had my back bare and my hands and feet chained. Crowley decided a table and a set of spell-tooled straps would do better at holding me.

I was stripped of my clothes and forced upon it. Crowley belted me in himself, and then he pretended he had a medical license and began cutting through flesh and muscle.

I screamed and yelled, and my entire body tried to escape from the hole he cut in me.

Then he stopped. “Make the gun for me, Lark,” he said. He hadn’t asked until then.

“No,” I told him through clenched teeth.

The lesser demon that Gabriel had frightened came to Crowley then. “I can possess her!” he said confidently.

And before Crowley could tell him anything, the demon was smoke. The moment he touched my body, he burst into flames.

Crowley stared. I laughed. Gabriel’s curse had done something good. A rare thing.

“What was that?” Crowley asked me.

A gaping wound in my side and he wanted to ask questions.

My laughter was cut short as he carved down into my bones. It was nearly unbearable. I screamed at the pain and laughed at his confusion.

“Enochian?” he questioned.

How was I still alive. My bones had been stripped bare of flesh in my own body and I still lived and breathed.

There was an agonizing scrape on my ribs. I assumed he was trying to chisel the sigils off my bones. I saw a flash of blue and he stumbled away.

He clutched at his arm and tried to shake the knife out of his hand. He grit his teeth when he had to rip it out of his own melted flesh.

“What’s a girl like you doing hanging around with angels?” he asked. He appeared amused by his injury.

“Convince me why I shouldn’t,” I said.

It only dawned on me then that I was not as strong as I was claiming to be. There was a hole in me down to organs and bone and I was not in shock. I was drawing on Gabriel’s strength. My pain was his. His power through the Enochian and our bond was sapping his energy to keep me alive.

“What angel?” Crowley asked, knife in his other hand.

“Dunno,” I mumbled. “That bastard left just after cursing my family. Now the script is hereditary.”

“You were born with this?” he asked. Again, confused.

“Keep scratching at it. It doesn’t come off,” I laughed.

I had watched Isaiah find that out by cutting into one crying baby. He couldn’t remove a sigil until the child was dead, and even then, it still came back, as if it regrew.

“You’re a branded cow,” Crowley laughed.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I sighed.

Gabriel was easing my pain and I was speaking poorly of him to a demon.

“I wouldn’t brand you,” Crowley said, a sudden change in tone. I watched him cautiously. I wasn’t sure where he was going next. “You wouldn’t be forced to remember that you were mine,” he said, “you would want to be mine.”

“Only in your dreams, Crowley,” I told him.

“My demon said there was an angel. He wasn’t lying, was he?”

“I’m split open and you’re asking me about the moral decency of your followers?”

He wasn’t happy with me. “What angel?” he asked again.

“Afraid of what you’re up against?” I smiled.

“Part Colt,” he began. “Part Carmody. And a little dash of angel. You know these wards are supposed to keep me from finding you.”

“Ever think I wanted you to find me?”

I was speaking without thinking. The loss of blood was leaving me delirious. Poking at the King of the Crossroads was not the best idea.

“And why would you want that?”

“I admit,” I said, trying to cover my misstep. “Growing up in the dark, I missed the comforts of a knife in my flesh.”

Crowley appeared startled. Then he smiled. “The other Colts weren’t too specific on what went on there,” he said.

“Go ask Jonah,” I told him. “I’m sure he’d welcome your visit.”

He vanished.

I breathed a sigh of relief and prayed to Gabriel. I told him not to come for me. There were only a few days left. Crowley wasn’t getting anything out of me. He had nothing left to go on, and Jonah would only assure him that he would lose.

The wound in my side throbbed. I was still bleeding, but over all, I felt well. It was the bond, and my life was in Gabriel’s hands.

With the blinding light in my face, I couldn’t see anything around me. I didn’t know how long I was there. Minutes blurred into hours, into what felt like days. I was lost in this blinding light. It hurt my eyes.

I fell asleep.

“Lark?” I heard. I looked around and found Gabriel standing before me in the dark.

“I’m dreaming?” I asked.

He shrugged. It was such a human gesture that it made me smile.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

I laughed. I couldn’t stop myself.

He was smiling at me when I finally stopped. “Bad choice of words?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Should be asking you that, though. Shouldn’t I? I’m only alive right now because of you.”

“How are you smiling?” he asked. “You’re in so much pain that I can feel it. I felt that knife cutting through me, Lark. And it hurt.”

He was feeling everything I was. Now that was a fact.

“Can you last a few more days?” I asked.

Gabriel nodded. “It would take more than that to kill me,” he said. “But it’s you I’m worried about. Your body was not made to endure this kind of punishment.”

“I hardly feel it anymore,” I said.

Gabriel appeared sad. “You don’t have to do this,” he told me. “Screw my cover. I’ll kill Crowley and you can take Samuel Colt’s things and we’ll just go.”

“No,” I told him. “I’ve got this, Gabe. I can beat Crowley and you can stay hidden. Just stay out of sight.”

His jaw tightened.

“Crowley said it best,” I told him. “Part Colt, part Carmody, and a dash of angel… There is nothing he can do to me that hasn’t already been done.”

Gabriel sighed. He seemed resigned to let me do as I wanted. “If you need me…” he said and let his words go.

“I’ll call,” I assured him. “Those two words brought that charming smile back to his face. It was infectious. I couldn’t help but smile back.

A pinching feeling in my abdomen made me say, “Ow…”

I looked to Gabriel and he was holding his side. “Time to wake up,” he said.

I opened my eyes and found Crowley stitching me back together.

“You have forty-eight hours left with me,” he said solemnly. “I will make these the best two days of your life.”

“Don’t pity me, Crowley,” I grumbled.

“I wouldn’t dare,” he told me.

His stitches were crude but effective. It would leave an impressive scar. I was almost looking forward to it.

When he was done, he removed my restraints and covered my naked body with a blanket as I sat up. “What gives, Crowley?” I muttered.

“Torture would never work on you, Laura Colt,” he told me. “I should have spoken to your brother before. There is no blood or death that would ever phase you. Your hell is worse than the real one.”

“Thanks…” I muttered.

“You would make an impressive demon in Hell,” he told me. “Queen of Hell, even.”

“Not very appealing,” I told him. “Even if you were the King.”

He stepped toward me and placed a hand on my cheek before brushing his lips against my forehead.

My heart leapt into my throat. There was fear in the new adrenaline that rushed through my veins. He was too close. He was touching me. There was no knife in his hand.

“For the next two days,” he said, “You are my queen.” His words were a whisper against my skin.

“Why?” I barely managed to ask. My words were a terrible growl.

“Because that is as long as our deal has left,” he said.

“And Sam Colt’s junk?”

“Is yours before you leave.”

I was unsure. This genuine care from a demon felt belittling.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

My response was automatic. “I’m fine…”

He stepped away from me and held out his hand to help me off of the table. I didn’t take it. I refused to willingly touch him.

Clutching the blanket to my battered skin, I stepped down from the table. My legs were weak. I stumbled over my own feet and Crowley set his hands on my shoulders to steady me. Gabriel had waited for me to fall. Crowley didn’t let me get that far.

“Seems I restrained you too long,” he said with an unusual tone of sadness.

He moved to my right side and gently supported my weight against him. The only direction I wanted to go was away.

“What would you like to eat?” he asked. “I can have your favorite demon chef make whatever you’d like.”

“Doesn’t mean it’ll be good,” I muttered.

Crowley chuckled, “True.”

My knees trembled as we made our way across the empty warehouse to where Crowley had set up a table, chairs, and all the makings of a romantic candlelight dinner. I didn’t have a romantic bone in my body. I wanted to blow out the candles and draw a devil’s trap on the floor with the wax.

As I sat down with all the grace of a broken slinky, I only managed to say, “What the hell, Crowley?”

“I would have taken you to dinner in town, but you didn’t appear to be up for it,” he said.

“And whose fault is that?” I growled back. It hurt to speak. It hadn’t before. Why was there pain now?

I felt ill and I slumped over in my chair.

“Easy, Love,” Crowley said. “You’re using too much of yourself just hating me. It’ll be easier on you if you just trust me.”

Never. I couldn’t say it. I was too tired.

Crowley sat across the table from me. He held out his hand and I wished I could cut it off.

Forty-eight hours and I could leave. I only had to suffer his company a little longer.

I imagined I would be spending a lot of time with Gabriel after this. He wasn’t going to let me out of his sight for sometime, but strangely, I was okay with that thought.

I had been fighting him for a month now, and Crowley had a point: It was tiring to stay angry all the time.

Gabriel posed a very strong threat to my safety, but sitting across from Crowley, I realized that Gabriel was still trying to play by my rules. He could have done to me what Crowley did, or what my family did to those women imprisoned in the Stronghold. But the archangel didn’t. In his screwed up way, I knew he was trying to protect me.

I frowned. I wondered if the bond was letting his emotions flood into me. I wasn’t happy with that.

“What’s wrong, Dearie?” Crowley asked. I glanced to him and he motioned to his face. He must have read the vague details of what was going through my mind.

I frowned and sighed heavily.

I would have rather been with Gabriel. He wouldn’t have carved into me like a roasted bird and then forced me to have dinner with him.

I looked to Crowley as he watched that same demon cook from the diner come to our table.

“Miss Lark,” he addressed me.

I gave him a quaint smile and he beamed proudly.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Riley,” he said amicably.

“Sounds harmless,” I muttered. My ribs hurt as my voice rumbled through them.

“He is,” Crowley sighed.

“I’ve been brushing up on my cooking skills, Miss Lark,” Riley told me. “Whatever you’d like.”

I couldn’t eat anything he made, but I felt guilty sending that smiling demon away.

“Send me your best,” I said. “Surprise me.”

He was excited as he ran away.

Crowley stared at him with an open mouth. “What about me, you git?” he grumbled.

Gabriel would have wanted something sweet.

“I want pumpkin pie,” I muttered.

Something was wrong in that warehouse. I could have been lured into a false sense of security, but I knew a demon when I saw one, and Crowley had something up his sleeve.

Sleeves. He was wearing a suit. How proper. Even the demon looked nicer than I did. And those eyes. Such sincere eyes for a creature that had only recently been pulling me apart to find out how I worked. What had he even been looking for?

I asked.

“Laura,” he said.

I bit back my anger, but my voice was still sharp as I said, “My name is Lark.”

Only Bobby called me Laura. I had too many names. I had changed myself and reinvented myself too many times. I was Lark, by everyone. I didn’t know who Laura was. She sounded happy. I would never be her. She sounded like a person that was ignorant of the real world.

“Lark,” Crowley said slowly. “You are unique. There is no other human that can compare to what you are.”

“You’re full of shit,” I grumbled, “Get to the point.”

“It was wrong of me to touch you without your permission,” he said.

“Go back to hell,” I said.

“I understand your animosity toward male figures in your life,” he told me.

Crowley left his seat and came to kneel at my side. He took my hand in his and said, “I am not like them.”

I wondered if I could ever lie as perfectly as the demon before me. The King of the Crossroads was trying to relate to me.

“Eat a dick,” I muttered.

“You have to trust someone, Lark. I can’t give a reason because no reason in the world would make you, but trust me when I say I am here for you.”

I did trust someone. I trusted Gabriel.

I trusted Gabriel. I admitted that to myself and it felt strange. I couldn’t trust a word out of Crowley’s mouth, but Gabriel was trying. He was trying to do good.

Gabriel would not hurt me.

The longer Crowley tried to win me over, the more I pulled away. His comfort was stifling. I couldn’t breathe. He was smothering me with his false care and consideration.

When my food came, Crowley left my side. It smelled good, but so had so many other things that had tried to ruin my stomach.

“Chicken parmigiana,” Riley said proudly.

“Could I have some pumpkin pie?” I asked.

Riley appeared crestfallen. “It takes a while for pie. I can have it for you later today.”

I nodded and started with a taste from the plate he had given me. I had never eaten anything like that before. Savory flavors, each bite was something new; something delicious. But I could hardly eat it. The entire body was involved in eating, and I couldn’t.

I stopped short a few bites in. I couldn’t do it.

Riley came out to check on me and frowned when he saw how little of it I had touched.

“That bad, huh?” he sighed.

“Really good, actually,” I told him. “The hole in my side won’t let me enjoy it.”

Riley glared at Crowley.

“Watch it,” Crowley warned him.

Riley seemed undisturbed by the warning. He looked to me and said, “I’ll go work on that pie for you,” before he left.

“You are just a magnet,” Crowley said to me when Riley was gone. “Turning enemies into friends in the blink of an eye.”

“Unintended,” I replied, “I assure you.”

“I told you you were special,” he said.

If I had the strength and the magic, I would have blown him to pieces. It was annoying. It was eating at me worse than the wound in my side. I was not special. I was not unique. I was an invisible girl with no past and no future. I belonged to no one. I was no one.

I was no one.

No one.

Nothing.

I did not deserve to exist.

I was not worth the time of a demon.

I was worthless.

I could hear my father yelling in my head. I could hear him damning my existence; cursing the day he let me live.

I heard it nearly every day, until I was the last child left. Then I was all he had. I was his last hope for the future. I scarcely lived until he died.

Gabriel had forced me into existence again. It was terrifying, but I existed. I mattered. Someone saw me that wasn’t another hunter. Gabriel knew me.

When I looked up, my food was cold. The candles had burned low. Crowley was gone.

I tried to stand and collapsed to the floor in a heap. I whimpered. My mind was sound but my body couldn’t keep up. My body was run down in seven days and Crowley had hardly done anything.

“Easy, Love,” I heard Crowley say, and then I heard the click of his fancy shoes.

He lowered himself to sit beside me. Crowley on the floor was a strange sight. He brushed a strand of my hair over my ear and said, “Just rest, Lark. If you destroy your stitches, you could bleed out.”

“Boo hoo,” I muttered.

“There… might be a way I could lend…” he stopped short in his words. “Nevermind.”

I didn’t rise to the bait. I never was that curious. If someone told me to never mind, I didn’t.

There was no telling what this demonic salesmen was trying to get out of me, but I didn’t want what he was selling. I didn’t have an impressive soul, and it was already going to Hell. I didn’t want to cut it down to ten years or less if I could help it.

No one wants to die. Not really. Including me.

I was too weak to argue with Crowley as I lay there on the warehouse floor. It felt as if I had nothing left. I couldn’t move. I had nothing left in me. Crowley had broken me.

He sat there, stroking my hair as if I enjoyed his company. He remained staring out at nothing, as if this were some romantic moment in his mind and I was not hopelessly crippled on the floor.

It was only at that moment that I thought I would die there. I would die at Crowley’s side and take the archangel Gabriel with me. I couldn’t do that. If it were only me, I would not have made it to day seven. If it were only me, I would be gone. I was tied to Gabriel through my own foolishness and I could not let him be dragged to Hell with me.

That thought was an interesting one. Would the angel’s vessel be destroyed? Or would my destiny in Hell drag Gabriel with me to the pit? Would he be as weak as my soul in Hell?

I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t.

“You’re so quiet, Love,” Crowley said, his voice shattering my thoughts.

I wanted to tell him that my pain was the source of my silence, and the source of my pain was him. However, the thought might delight him, no matter what he had said before.

I only had some hours left. I could lay in silence and let Crowley pat my head as if I were his pet. I didn’t have to speak.

My eyes closed for only a moment, but suddenly Gabriel was there in my mind again. He appeared to be in pain. He appeared faded. He held his side where Crowley had ripped into me.

Was there something wrong with the wound?

Gabriel disappeared and I was awake again.

Crowley brushed a strand of my hair behind my ear and sighed, “You must think so little of me.”

“You have no idea,” I grumbled.

I wondered if something Crowley had done to me, besides cutting me open, was hurting Gabriel. Was there something in my body that was weakening him?

Under my blanket, I reached to my wound and began tearing at the stitches. They wouldn’t give. I tried to stay quiet as Crowley absentmindedly stroked my hair. He was so caught up in the sound of his own voice. I was trying to tune him out. He was trying to give me a logical reason to stay. He was nice, he would care for me, so he said.

The thread wouldn’t give, but my flesh did. I ripped at my skin. There was nowhere for my pain to go and my eyes began to water.

I dug into my own body, past the layers of twine that Crowley had sewn me up with. My hand was deep in my body when I felt something. It wasn’t any part of me. It felt like a coin.

“You’re bleeding,” Crowley said with all the concern in his voice that Gabriel had always given me.

I pulled that coin from my body and held it out to him. “What is that?” I asked. “Did you chip me like a dog, Crowley?”

“If you’re in trouble,” he said defensively. “I can find you. I can help.”

I forced myself to sit up. The sheet dropped away from my body as I set about pulling his black thread from the wound. Flesh hung on thin tissue. It was a shredded mess.

As I dropped the string away from me, I felt Gabriel’s power flow into me. It was like taking a breath of fresh air.

I rose to my feet and shouted, “What the fuck, Crowley?”

He stared at me, his mouth agape. “What are you?”

“I’m a Colt, Crowley. We can’t be killed so easily.”

He grinned back at me from where he sat on the floor. He was smug, as if he had won something. “Unless you’re killed by another Colt?” he asked.

My muscles tensed and the blood flowed quicker from my wound. It was hot as it ran down the side of my body.

I was on borrowed time. My blood was Gabriel’s blood. I was bluffing on my strength, more than even I knew. I wondered if my life was Gabriel’s, could I even bleed out? Or was I truly bleeding his blood?

“I’m the last Colt, Crowley,” I said. “There is nothing short of an apocalypse that could kill me.”

“You claim to be human, “he said, “But you forget that you don’t have to lose your life to be dead and broken.”

“I gave you seven days,” I told him. “But at this rate, you couldn’t break me in a year. In ten years. I’d wager to say a hundred, but I’ll have died by natural causes before then. You’re just a salesman, Crowley. And by my count, your time is almost up.”

He wasn’t smiling anymore. He slowly rose to his feet and offered me the discarded, bloody blanket. I snatched it from his hand and went to wrap it about myself. I didn’t get far.

The moment I looked away from him, he kissed me. I had never been truly shocked before. It felt like minutes passed before I could strike him.

His hands were so lightly on my shoulders. When I knocked him across his face, it split the skin on my knuckles, leaving blood on his cheek as I forced him a mere step back. He wasn’t touching me anymore.

My skin was crawling, or what was left of my skin.

Crowley slid a finger over his cheek, over the blood I had left on him. Then, he stared back at me as he placed that same finger in his mouth.

“You a demon or a fanger?” I muttered as I finished draping my sheet back around me.

My words had thwarted his attempt at human seduction. I was not the kind to fall prey to sex appeal. He should have known better.

“I have never met a human with a broom shoved so far up their—”

Riley cut off Crowley with his entrance. “Miss Lark!” he said as he rushed into the room. He slowed down as he approached me with a pie in his hands. “I’m sorry it took so long,” he said, “it just wouldn’t set. You can just take it with you when you leave.”

I took the pie tin from him. It smelled delicious. “Thank you Riley,” I said.

His head suddenly twisted on his neck and he fell to the floor.

Crowley stood there with his hand outstretched, a smile on his lips.

I had a pumpkin pie in my hands and my body trembled. That was it for Riley. He was gone for making me pie. Crowley had killed him for being nice.

I stared back at the King of the Crossroads and said, “How much longer am I forced to be in your company?”

“Five hours, Love,” he said.

I pulled my blanket around me and went to sit beside Riley’s dead body. I would protect the pie he gave me, and I would eat it when I was free. In his memory.

“You’re angry with me,” Crowley said.

“You’re petty,” I replied.

“Demon,” he shot back.

“Colt,” I said of myself.

“Right,” he told me, “then you shouldn’t care anything about a lesser demon’s death. Colt.”

“What do you care about, Crowley?” I asked.

“Me,” he said.

“Of course,” I replied.

He was still smiling at me as he said, “And what about you? What are you so full of care for?”

“Nothing,” I told him. “That is why when it comes to you and me, I will always win.”

His smile was gone again. His humor vanished.

I continued, “Your concern for your own well-being is still concern for something. That is where your value is. And it can make you fearful. And it can be used to break you.”

There was a sliver of a smile that flickered on his lips. It faltered between humor and a knowing grimace.

Crowley had a vulnerability. So far, he could not find one of mine. I couldn’t betray mine; I didn’t know what they were. I had had many of them beaten out of me, including the concern for my own life. I was grateful to get another day, if grateful was a word I could even use. I knew it was an unusual chance for me to make it past the few minutes after birth. Though I occasionally wondered why, I didn’t care enough to ever seek out the answer.

I sat with my pie on my lap, a dead body at my right and a demon at my far left. My blood was making a much larger spot on my blanket.

Crowley had stopped talking. I wanted to ask him if that was all he had, but I didn’t want to lose my hand again.

I was staring at the pie when I heard Crowley walk away from me. I wondered if it was possible that I had offended a demon.

I sat there by Riley. I wanted to apologize for getting him killed. It felt as if it were my fault. If I had never stumbled into that diner. If I had never shown him an ounce of attention. If I had just walked back out.

His death was on my hands as much as it was on Crowley’s. I hung my head. This was guilt.

I sat alone in my silence for the remaining hours in Crowley’s warehouse. He didn’t bother me, and I didn’t move.

When I heard the click of his shoes, I slowly rose to my feet.

There was a span of ten feet between myself and Crowley when he dropped a large bag on the floor. Metal clanked and clattered and I winced at the sound. He didn’t respect the tools of the trade.

“Just like that?” I asked.

“Don’t sweat the details, Love,” he told me.

I waited for him to step away from the bag before I approached it. I took everything out of it, inspected the bag for tears or rips that would have allowed him to hide something in it.

“I’m insulted,” he said mockingly.

“Good,” I told him.

At seeing nothing that seemed odd, I replaced the items back into the bag and took it in my hand as I stepped away from him. Samuel Colt’s belongings in one hand, pumpkin pie in the other.

“This is goodbye?” Crowley asked, feigning sadness.

“This is, if I ever see you again, I’m going to be the one tearing you to pieces,” I told him.

“Is that so?” he asked.

“Bye Crowley,” I said. I turned away from him and walked to where I had left my jacket what felt like months ago. I took the time to put it on over my blanket-dress and zip it up before I took up my pie and Samuel Colt’s bag once again. Then I glanced over to see Crowley standing where I had left him.

I had been tortured for seven days and it was two of his demons that had died. He seemed so alone, standing there in that large warehouse with no one else around.

I walked out of that warehouse on bare feet. Gabriel was lending me his strength to make it back to my hotel. Each step made my feet hurt, my toes still felt pain. I felt cold.

The walk felt longer than the seven days of torture, and when I made it to the door and stepped inside, I felt exhausted. I dropped the bag and my jacket just inside and then I laid on my bed with the pie by my side.

“Gabe?” I breathed.

He walked toward me out of nothing and stood beside me. He placed a hand over my wound and just a simple touch made the pain vanish. I was whole again. Then he lay beside me on the bed, his eyes closed. I closed mine too. There was finally relief from the constant, throbbing agony.

We laid there for some time. I knew we needed to leave, but I doubted Crowley would come for me. Not yet, anyway. He wouldn’t come until he had a plan that would lead him to victory. My submission.

“I will never ask you another favor,” Gabriel began to say, “but please, tell me where you’re going next time?”

“No problem,” I replied.


	12. Gabriel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel discovers Lark's intentions for Samuel Colt's tools, and a much too familiar face makes an appearance from Lark's past.

Chapter 12: Gabriel

Sometimes, I wondered if she even knew how much trouble she had gotten herself into. I felt weak after healing her, and it would take time to recover. However, during Crowley’s trials, she had been using my energy. After I took away that wound, I was feeling her soul. 

We laid there, existing in comfortable silence. She accepted me at her side and I was too overwhelmed to move. 

When Crowley had taken her, I had been on my way to the other side of the continent. I was trying to see exactly how far I could get without causing her discomfort. The pain she felt, pain she would never admit, had pulled me back. I had thought she was safe. 

“Hey Gabe?” she said softly. When had she started calling me Gabe?

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Want to split this pie?”

I rolled over on my side. “Pie?” I asked. “Who made it?”

She hesitated to say, “A friend…” but she almost seemed sad. I couldn’t hear it in her voice, but I saw it in her face. 

“Good enough for me,” I replied. 

Lark sat up and looked at the blood-stained sheet she wore. “Can I shower first?” 

“By all means,” I told her.

She set her pie tin on a table and looked directly at me as she said, “Don’t eat it.”

There was a story behind this pie. “I won’t touch it,” I told her.

She went into the bathroom and for the first time, I didn’t see steam pouring out from under the door. She wasn’t trying to burn off her flesh as she scrubbed herself clean. I wondered if it was because only the touch of another human bothered her. Or if it was simply because the heat of her temporary Hell had been too much. 

I tried not to put my mind on her thoughts. She was too complex for me to be even considering what she was thinking. 

When the water shut off in the bathroom, I heard the door open and she said, “Gabe?” so softly that I almost didn’t hear her. “I forgot a towel… and clothes.”

I could hear her fatigue. She was healed in body, but her spirit was weak. Had Crowley really affected her that much? She couldn’t be broken, not like that.

I fetched her towel and gave it to her. I thought of all of the clothes she had, and none of them seemed too comfortable. I created for her a pair of sweatpants and a long, thick shirt. I wondered immediately if I was overstepping my boundaries. 

Gently, I knocked on the door and handed her the clothes when she opened it.

“These aren’t mine,” she said the moment her hand touched them. I didn’t understand how she could know.

“They’re mine,” I told her.

That was the end of the discussion. The door closed and I was expecting an oncoming slew of angry comments that berated me for daring to give her something that wasn’t hers. But there was nothing. And soon the door opened to Lark dressed so comfortably that it made me smile. She walked on her toes to her bed and sat down. 

“You hate it…” I said when I looked at her face. She didn’t appear comfortable.

“What?” Her attention snapped to me and I could see the distant look she had. She had succumbed to her own thoughts again, chasing herself in circles in her head.

“The clothes?”

Smoothing her hands over the green fabric on her legs, she shook her head and folded her legs on the bed. “I like them. Thank you.”

I stood very still. I wasn’t sure what to say to her, so I sat at her side and stared at the wall in silence. I could feel the cold emanating from her skin. Carefully, I reached out and took her hand in mine. She let me. 

Her fingers were freezing cold. She had gone from trying to cook herself, to trying to die of hypothermia. “You’re cold, Lark. You’ll get sick.”

She pulled her hand away from me and set it in her lap. She was moving slowly. She wasn’t being defensive this time, only moving away from me. 

Lark wasn’t herself. She seemed sad. I thought to try a joke, something that would usually incite her famous anger for me. “I’ve got a shoulder here if you want to cry on it,” I said mockingly.

Then she leaned over and set her head against my shoulder. I flinched. She was quiet, and I glanced to her to see she had closed her eyes. Lark wasn’t sleeping, but if I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought she was.

I wondered if this was the key to interacting with Lark. I had to offer. She wouldn’t take from me what I was not clearly willing to offer, including comfort. She could read body language on a wendigo, but I had to tell her what was on my mind. Lark did not understand emotions. 

I wanted to wrap my arms around her and hold her close, but I knew she would not understand it the way I meant it. To say it, to ask it of her, she would outright refuse. But if I offered. 

I tried to think of the best way to word such an awkward question. There was no way to. “If you are feeling unsure…” I began slowly. “I can… hold you close to me, to provide you kind of comfort.”

She sat up straight quickly and sighed a soft chuckle. “You’re so weird, Gabriel,” she told me.  
I had to smile. “Pot calling the kettle black,” I said.

Lark looked to me with a puzzled expression. “I don’t understand that…” she said.

“They…” I stared at her. “They’re both black?”

“...Right…” she said. I was sure she hadn’t quite gotten it, but it wasn’t important enough for her to want to understand it. 

Standing, she went to where she had set the pie and looked to me. 

“Want me to magic up some plates?” I asked with a grin.

“Just a couple of forks,” she told me. Then she appeared lost in thought again. “This isn’t a formal pie… It’s a friendly pie.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I did as she asked. We sat on her bed and I watched her take the first bite of pumpkin pie.

The fork remained in her mouth as she savored the taste, her eyes shut tight. Her hands trembled. I couldn’t imagine a pie being that good. As I tried it, I realized it must not have been the pie that was on her mind. It was average, at best, made by someone that didn’t usually make them. The consistency was off. 

Somewhere, there was a pie-maker that had made Lark the best pie, not in taste, but because that person had made it. I could only wonder who it was, but I imagined a recent death; a death that had an unusually strong impact on Lark. 

“Did Crowley make you a pie and then you killed him for it?” I asked.

Lark choked on the bite of pie in her mouth and she started coughing until she began to laugh. A true laugh, loud and unchecked. It was beautiful. She sounded like her mother. 

We ate the rest of the pie in silence. She kept it down for once. Perhaps it was the best pie for her, not too sweet, not too heavy. 

Our decision to leave the hotel followed immediately. It was almost as if she had forgotten all about Crowley breathing down her neck for the past seven days. She didn’t change her clothes, but walked out to Earl barefoot. I stood at the passenger-side door to be let in.

“Hey,” she said softly, “Angel-boy.”

Back to insults. I moved so I could see her over the windshield. “Hey, Meatsuit,” I replied.

With a slight smile, she lifted her keys before her and asked, “Know how to drive stick?”

I stared at her. My mouth gaped open. I had learned to drive a standard when cars had first been invented. I didn’t care for vehicles, but this was Earl. “Yes,” I said shortly. 

“Want to get us on the road?” she asked.

I couldn’t say anything other than a short, “Yes.”

Lark opened the truck and slid down the bench seat into the passenger-side as I went around to the driver’s seat. If I had ever felt nervousness before, this was it. She handed me the keys and as I held down the clutch and turned the ignition, the truck jumped forward and stalled out.

“Oops,” Lark said. Then she added, “I left it in first.”

My hands were tight with fear on the steering wheel. She was so relaxed after her time with Crowley. I was the wreck. 

Starting the truck again, I released the emergency brake and gently set it into reverse. From the moment we were out on the open road, Lark’s gaze went out the window and she watched the world move past us as if she had never seen it before. She was mesmerized and bored all at the same time. I didn’t know it was possible. 

Perhaps it was the truck. When Lark drove, she was quiet, and now it was the same with me. And when I rode shotgun, I talked and told stories, and there was so much I wanted her to know. Earl was a magical truck. Lark began talking.

“I would have died… wouldn’t I?” she asked and I looked to her for clarity. “Without you?”

I took a deep breath and told her the truth. “Yes.”

“Were you dying?” she asked.

“I could have,” I replied.

“It was that bad…?” she muttered.

I nodded. “With your spell on me, and mine on you. It was.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. 

I glanced to her and I could see the guilt on her face as she drew her feet into the seat. She hugged her knees to her chest. The vulnerable Lark. Perhaps she realized she could show me this side of her now that she had seen exactly how close we were tied together. She didn’t have to hide from me. 

“Gabe,” she said softly. I glanced to her and she said, “We’re going the wrong way.”

“Wrong way?” I asked.

“To the homestead?” she said.

Her words were so casual, but a chill ran up my human spine. Why did we need to go to the Colt homestead? 

She must have seen something on my face, for she said, “To hide Sam Colt’s stuff?”

I hadn’t cared much about those things anymore. And I didn’t want Lark to go back to that place. It wasn’t a place she needed to be. Most of all, I couldn’t go there with her. It would be Lark all alone in a hole of memories. 

I shut my mouth and headed for the Colt stronghold. It would take some time to get there, and I didn’t want to run her truck into the ground. 

An hour into the drive and I happened to glance over and see her resting her head against the window. Her eyes were closed.

“Lark?” I asked, but she didn’t stir. She was asleep.

I pulled her truck over to the side of the road and, as quietly as I could, I got out. I remembered the rules. 

Darkness fell as I laid in the truck-bed. Occasionally a vehicle passed by, but they never stopped. It was come and go headlights and then nothing but silence. There was nothing to do but pass the time away. Lark needed to sleep. I needed to rest. We were finally in the middle of nowhere. No Crowley, no Winchesters, no one. Just the last Colt and her archangel. 

That thought was wrong. I did not belong to Lark, I was my father’s soldier. Whether or not I was on Earth, I needed to remember my place. I would not make the mistakes Gadreel had. I needed to keep my distance from Lark, as much as I wished I didn’t have to. I was becoming complacent.

A shout of panic came from within the cab of the truck and I felt Lark’s heart lurch within me. She bolted out of the passenger-side door and stumbled on the shoulder of the road on her bare feet. When she regained her balance, she rushed into the tall grass and collapsed to her knees. 

Her heart was beating so hard, I was afraid to get near her. I sat up in the bed of the truck and just watched her set her hands firmly on the ground. She looked so in control. She looked as if she were simply kneeling on the ground. I wanted to know what was going on inside her head. If her body and her heart conflicted so greatly, I wondered if her mind was a mediator. Were her thoughts as frantic as her heartbeat?

“Gabriel?” I heard my name but it wasn’t from her. I heard it in my head. She was praying to me.

“I’m here!” I shouted as I leapt out of the bed of her truck. 

Lark whipped around so fast that she moved across the ground. She stared back at me with wide eyes and I stepped back. Fight or flight. I couldn’t tell what she was planning to do. 

Her heart settled in her chest. Her eyes narrowed upon me in the darkness. Then, she got to her feet and dusted herself off. I didn’t know what the rules were anymore as she slowly walked toward me on her toes. 

I didn’t know if she was going to yell at me, or if I was going to get a reprise of her quiet affections that had surfaced around that strange, friendly pie.

“Call the Winchesters,” I told her.

She shot back, “What?”

“Let them know you have Samuel Colt’s belongings,” I said. “Also, to meet you at the Colt place.”

“Why?” she asked defensively.

“Because I can’t go in there with you, and you need back up.”

“For an empty building?” she growled. 

“For your sanity,” I told her. 

She was much too quick to take to her defenses. She didn’t want anyone, angel or demon, god or devil, to know if she was in pain, if she was afraid. I began to think she was second guessing any thoughts she had previously been having to let me in. 

Whatever had happened with Crowley had passed. Lark Colt had returned to her senses. I needed to return to mine. 

I had thought I was going to get back behind the wheel of the truck, but she was quick to take her place in the driver’s seat. Before starting the truck, she took her hardly used cell phone, clicked a few buttons, and held it to her ear. 

To my surprise, she said, “Hey… Sam?” when her call was answered.

“Huh? No. I need backup,” she told him. “What? … Yeah. I’ll text you the coordinates.” 

There was a pause before she said, “Coordinates are numbers, you asshole.” Then she hung up and started the truck. 

Behind the wheel, she wasn’t speaking. I didn’t know if I was in the right or wrong by leaving the truck. Her jaw was tight as I glanced to her, and she didn’t seem to even want to look at me. 

We were two hours back into our journey north when the silence began to eat at me. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or not.

“Lark?” I finally asked.

“Yes?” she replied softly.

“What was I supposed to do?” I asked carefully. I thought, if I kept my volume low, perhaps she would as well.

Her hands gripped tight on the steering wheel until her knuckles paled. She sighed and let it all go. “I panicked,” she said plainly. “You followed the rules but in my head I changed them. Sorry.”

Her use of that word was overwhelming. She knew what it meant, and I doubted she would ever say it without truly meaning it. Lark had no reason to say a word she didn’t mean. I couldn’t help but smile.

“You called the Winchesters,” I mentioned.

“You told me to,” she said and glanced to me with raised brows. 

“You never do what I say,” I chuckled.

“I trust you.”

We were going to clash over things. Of course we were, but if nothing else, I had earned her trust. I would fight to keep from losing it. 

 

As the sun rose over the horizon the next morning, Lark pulled into a small town with an early-bird diner. “Hungry…” she muttered as she got out of the truck. She was tired from driving all night, but instead of sleep, she wanted food. 

It was a diner fit for travelers. Most of the seats were at the bar, and there wasn’t a hostess to tell us where to sit. Lark made a beeline to the bar and sat on one of the stools. I sat at her right. 

“Morning, Arlene,” the waitress said as she approached. Lark sat up straight and looked back at the woman. “Your usual?” the waitress asked.

Lark balked. “I… I don’t think I’m the person you think I am,” she said.

“You don’t think you’re Arlene?” the waitress shot back. 

“I’m not Arlene,” Lark hastened to say. 

“Well what is your name, Not-Arlene?”

“Kolby,” she said. “Kolby Caid.”

“You look an awful lot like Arlene,” the woman said.

“I have never been, nor would I ever be, an Arlene,” Lark replied a little sharper. Her patience was thin with her lack of sleep.

“You look just like Arlene,” the waitress said, “are you sure?”

I had to step in. I could see Lark’s shoulders tightening. “We really only just got to town,” I said.

The waitress then joked, “I guess you’ve got a doppleganger named Arlene.”

Lark wasn’t laughing. She got up and left the diner. The waitress was confused as much as I was and I ran after Lark.

She got back in her truck and I was surprised to see her waiting for me when I stepped outside. The way she had rushed out of the building, I was certain she was going to put the truck in gear and peel out. I jumped into the cab and before I could close the door, she was pulling out.

“Lark?” I said. “You’re hungry, you need to eat something.”

“Not here,” she replied. 

I couldn’t get another word from her until we pulled into another town and another restaurant more than a hundred miles away. By then, her stomach was growling loud enough that I could hear it. 

As we walked through the doors, the hostess smiled and said, “Good morning Arlene! Oh! Remember that guy I was telling you about the other day?”

Lark turned around and walked back out without saying a word. 

When I got back into the truck, I looked to her and her hands were tight on the wheel. “Have you ever used the name, Arlene?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. 

“Do… you know anyone who has?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “but I killed her.”

We left that restaurant and Lark found a hotel. She pulled bags out of her truck and settled in in silence. I stood at the threshold and watched her focus return to her sawed off shotgun. I hadn’t seen it in a while, I forgot it used to be attached to her hand. 

Her stomach growled in hunger again but she ignored it. She was on a mission. 

“You need to sleep,” I told her.

She said nothing.

“You need to eat,” I told her.

She didn’t even look at me.

I had to get her attention or she was going to follow the stupid hunter route and put the job before her own life. 

Walking over to her as she sat on the bed, I sat beside her. “I need you to talk to me, Lark,” I said softly. “I know you don’t want my help, but remember, I’m a part of this too, now.”

She stopped moving. Her attention lifted from that shotgun in her hands and she glanced over to me. “There’s someone out there with my face, Gabe,” she said.

“You just made it away from Crowley. We’re tired, Lark. Besides, if that person is pretending to be you, maybe you could use it to your advantage?” I told her, “You can hide while Arlene draws all of the attention off of you with your own face.”

Cautiously, I held out my hand for the sawed off. Lark watched me for a moment. She must have considered that I was only looking out for her, but whatever she decided, she handed the gun over and lay back on her bed. 

I carefully moved her things to the table and then returned to her. I had a lapse in judgement. Like a caring human, I was going to set her legs on the bed and then cover her up. The moment I touched her, she kicked me. One bare foot square in the chest. 

I wasn’t expecting it. I stumbled back and fell across the other bed. When I sat up, she was staring at me with that wide-eyed look of fear. She said she trusted me, but abuse had been so ingrained in her soul that a careless gesture could still set her off. 

From where I sat, I watched realization dawn on her face. The fear left her eyes and she looked back at me with guilt. “Sorry,” she said.  
I shook my head. “It was my fault.” She had turned to apologizing so quickly. When I had met her she hadn’t even known the meaning of the word, and now she used it as if everything was her fault. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

Lark stared at me a moment before moving under the blankets. She pulled them up to her shoulders and curled upon herself to sleep.  
I rubbed the center of my chest. The blow she had landed had actually hurt. I wondered if she had harnessed my own power and used it against me without even trying to. It was a strange thing that I would have to look into. 

The room was dark, the lights were off, and I laid on my bed and looked at the ceiling. I had to remember that Lark was not just any human. She was not there to be loved and coddled. Aside from the bond that held us together, I would not normally have associated myself with someone like her. She was so closed off, even if it wasn’t as bad as it had been upon our first meeting. 

Once Samuel Colt’s tools were safe, however, my reason for tagging along with her would be done. And she never needed me to begin with. Would she ask me to leave? I could tell her how far I could go from her side and let her make up her mind. 

While I wanted things Lark was incapable of giving, that comfort of touch and casual conversation, I liked Lark. She was learning new things every day. She wasn’t afraid to step forward and keep going when others would have lost hope. And most of all, Lark was a Colt, one of my Colts that I had foolishly let down. If the rest of my existence was spent trying to make it up to her, I would do it. 

I went and got her food. I could have created it from nothing, but my taste in food was different than hers. 

I left the hotel room and Lark in a deep sleep. The door was locked and I had left her shotgun in reach in case something tried to come through to get her. Then I went for a walk. Something food-based had to be within walking distance of her room, something she would eat. 

I knew her palatability for gas-station food, so I wandered to the Gas N Sip to see if they had a bacteria-infested ham sandwich that she could digest. 

Staring at the chiller full of pre-packaged traveler-food, I heard a familiar voice. “Howdy Carl.”

I tried not to turn around too quickly. The woman looked like Lark. She sounded like her too, but even when Lark was pretending to be someone else, she had a look about her. This woman was an open book. She reminded me of the Lark I had created in my mind, the one I had taken to bed. 

She spoke with the cashier like an old friend as she paid to put gas in her car, a much newer model of car. Lark would have hated it. 

When she left the store, I calmly abandoned my search for food and followed her out. “Arlene?” I called out as she neared her vehicle.

She turned around quickly and looked at me with a question in her eyes. Her eyes, Lark’s eyes, were narrowed in curiosity. The color, the skin, the hair, everything was the same, except Arlene wore clothes that fit her, and wore her hair up in a stylish, yet messy, bun. 

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“No,” I told her and shook my head, “but I know the person you took your look from.”

“I’m sorry,” she said casually, “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Shapeshifter?” I asked. “Zygon?” I had been watching too much television.

“So, you do know,” she replied, a little more on edge. I could see her preparing to run. 

“Yes,” I said, “I just wanted to know why? Why her?”

“She doesn’t exist,” she told me. “If you know her, then you know that.”

I thought for a second that she was going to try to escape, but she calmly went to her car and began pumping the fuel.

“But she does exist now, Arlene, and she is in danger, which means you are as well,” I told her.

She stared at me with wide eyes, an expression of fear that was much different than Lark. There was a lack of fire in her. Lark was fire, always moving, even when she was still, she was thinking. Arlene was water. She froze. 

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“There are demons after her, specifically her,” I said and she frowned. Then I asked, “How did you meet her?”

She scoffed. “That’s a long story,” she said. 

“I have time,” I replied. It wasn’t every day I ran into someone Lark had known before I met her. Sometimes, I had to remind myself that just because she was no longer invisible after we met, it didn’t mean she didn’t exist before then. 

“It was several years ago,” Arlene said, “She was… I’d say about fourteen when I met her. You… you know she’s from a family of hunters, right?”

I nodded as she finished filling up her tank and she hung the nozzle back up. 

“Well, I guess it was her first time out with her brothers. They were after my brother. He was a shapeshifter. We were… kind of assholes back then, me and him. I guess her brothers were forced to take her with them on the hunt. We never would have noticed them if it weren’t for their louder than normal complaining. You could tell they weren’t used to having her around them.” Arlene leaned back on her car and crossed her arms below her breasts. It was a very Lark gesture.

“Her first hunt?” I asked.

She nodded. “It had to be. There were four of them, and two of us, and we thought if we shifted to look like them, it would be harder for them. It was actually harder for us at first. We kept forgetting what they looked like. We kept forgetting all about them when they weren’t hot on our asses. And when we were able to get a bit of their hair and turn into them, we would forget who we were supposed to be. It was a mess.”

I could see her remembering those days, they passed before her eyes as if she were running from the Colts again. 

She continued with, “I thought we were done for. I was pinned down when that little red-haired girl came at me with a pistol in her hand. I had separated from my brother. She wasn’t phased at all. She wasn’t scared. She was just blank. And then she reached back and plucked out a few strands of her own hair and held it out to me. She said she couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t still kill me, but I might be able to get away. She told me her name and then she ran off in a different direction.”

I paused. “She let you go?”

Arlene said, “Yeah. And for some reason, I remembered everything after that. My brother and I both took her form. We got better at hiding from them, but they were just relentless. And then they caught him. I don’t know if they only thought there was one of us, or what, but after she killed my brother, they never came after me.”

“She killed him?” 

With a smirk too similar to Lark’s, Arlene said, “That’s what she was supposed to do. With her brothers snorting down her back, she didn’t have a choice.”

“She tried to save you,” I sighed. The old Lark, the young Lark, had tried to help another person.

“After my brother was killed, they just left, like the end of a quest. They all went home. She looked like she was going to cry, but she didn’t,” Arlene told me. “You know… usually, when I shapeshift, I get some kind of memories. But not with her. It was only darkness. Everything was so dark.”

“Then why did you stay in that form?” I asked. “You even matured that form.”

She chuckled. “Yeah. Well, I thought… If I could live the life of someone that didn’t exist, that had no past and no future, no one would care. I also thought… if I could live for her, maybe I could honor her. She spared my life until she couldn’t any longer. She thought she killed me.”  
With a gentle shake of her head, she added, “With the way those boys treated her. I never thought she was going to live into her twenties.” 

“Do you live around here?” I asked.

Nodding, she told me, “On the other side of town. I work just down there.” She pointed down the street and added, “I’m a paralegal for one of the best lawyers in the tri-state area.”

“Doing good?” I asked.

“Only good,” she replied with a quaint smile. “We do a lot of pro bono work.”

“Keep it up,” I said.

I turned to walk back into the store for Lark’s food and she said, “Wait… what happens to me, now?”

“You get to be Arlene,” I told her. “You’re nothing like our mutual friend. I don’t even see a resemblance.”

She smiled. It wasn’t Lark’s smile. There was only one Lark. My Lark.


	13. Lark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally Lark returns Samuel Colt's tools to the Colt compound.

Chapter 13: Lark

My foot hurt. I had tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. Either it was the pain in my foot or Gabriel in the room. But when he left for whatever reason, it only worsened. His care to put my shotgun in reach was appreciated, but even the slightest creak of the wind pushing on the windows made me want to grab it. 

I was jumpy and I hated it. 

A knock on the door had me sitting up in my bed with my shotgun ready and aimed. “It’s just me, Lark,” Gabriel said as if he could see me prepared to shoot him through the door.

“Alright,” I said back, a little quieter than I intended, but he heard me and entered the room.

“Food,” he said and held out a plastic bag toward me.

“I’m not hungry,” I said and he gave me this look that made me take the bag from his hands. I was hungry, but it was an automatic answer. 

He sat across from me on his bed and said, “I ran into that woman Arlene.”

I paused and glanced up to him.

“Those people are blind. She looks nothing like you,” he said. “I mean, aside from being a redhead.”

“All redheads look alike, Gabe,” I muttered as I opened the bag. Inside was a small bag of jerky and a turkey sandwich that had seen better days. It was just as delicious as it needed to be. 

But of course there was something about eating turkey that made me sleepy. I didn’t know what it was, but when I finished it, I laid back down and pulled my blanket to my shoulders.

“Did you talk to her?” I asked.

He hesitated. “Yes,” he said.

“What’d she say?”

Gabriel gave me one of the most human shrugs I had seen from him. Then he replied, “Talked about her brother.”

I wasn’t sure why I cared. If Gabriel said this Arlene didn’t look like me, then I believed him. I needed to believe him. I wanted to. 

My eyelids were getting heavy. Gabriel turned on the television and I spent the rest of my waking hours that night chuckling at some strange Japanese gameshow.

 

The curtains were drawn tight on the windows, but a little sliver of light brightened the foot of my bed and I curled up into the darkness. I pulled my blanket tighter around me, not because I was cold, but it was comforting to be wrapped in something. Before, I only had my truck. My loneliness was written on everything I had, but now there was Gabriel. 

Gabriel… He was damned because of me, I was damned because of him. I was the most vulnerable I had been in my entire life, and yet I was content. No, I wasn’t content, I was perhaps, happy. It was a strange feeling, the comfort I had in that room with that angel. He was looking out for me, for my health and safety. It took Crowley to make me realize that there were worse things than having a well-meaning angel following me around. 

I rolled over in my bed and glanced to the ceiling before sitting up.

The angel on the other side of the room looked to me briefly before raising himself on his left arm. 

“What?” I asked.

“I thought we were going somewhere,” he said.

“No…” I said and laid back down. I didn’t have anywhere to be. We had only stopped in that town because I had been convinced I had a shapeshifter on the loose, but Gabriel had assured me otherwise. The only place I had left to go was home, and I did not want to go there.

I curled up in my bed and drew the blanket over my nose. Gabriel watched me a moment before laying back down. He seemed bored.

“You don’t have to stay,” I told him. “Take a day off.”

He looked to me and seemed hesitant to leave. “Can I stay?” he asked.

I shrugged. “If you want. I’m not going anywhere.”

Gabriel sat up again and swung his feet to the floor. He moved so fast I sat up out of habit and stared back at him. He sat very still. He was trying not to set me off. I had kicked him before. 

“I’ll leave,” he said as he rose to his feet.

“Sorry,” I told him as I laid back down. “It’s a difficult thing to get used to.”

“You don’t have to be sorry about everything, Lark,” he told me. “I understand. You just need more space than other people.”

Other people. He was talking about normal people. I knew I didn’t fit in with the crowd on the other side of that hotel room door, but the way he said it made me feel small. I wanted to hide under my bed again. 

“Lark,” he said. “You’re doing it again.”

I looked back at him and I could see his disapproval. My mind was simply not sound from my time with Crowley. I didn’t seem to even know what I wanted. Before Crowley, I would have preferred that I be alone. But now, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be left alone. How was I supposed to tell him that without groveling? How was I supposed to tell Gabriel that I was afraid, not of Crowley, but of helplessness? 

I hadn’t been helpless when we were in the Stronghold. I had taken the situation. Gabriel had trusted me to know what to do. He had laid beside me at night and wanted nothing from me. I was safe with Gabriel. What was I without him?

Without the archangel, I was alone and invisible. He had somehow become the other half of me.

“I’m losing my mind,” I breathed aloud.

Gabriel looked at me with confusion and I sat back up.

Were his thoughts leaking over to me? I knew he could feel my heartbeat, my pain. What was I getting from him? These weren’t my thoughts. They couldn’t be. I knew my place as a Colt. Where were all of these fears and uncertainties coming from?

“Gabe?” I asked and I could see the concern on his face. “What do you want with me?” 

He sat back down. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing, Lark. I don’t want anything from you, I never have.”

There was offense in his voice. I felt bad for even asking.

A sudden urge came over me and I didn’t understand what it was. I wanted closeness. I wanted him beside me. I wanted comfort.

I jumped to my feet and Gabriel scooted away from me on his bed. He stared up at me with wide eyes.

It had to be my spell. That was the only explanation. I had to get away from him. I had to clear my head. 

I rushed to the bathroom and took a shower. The water was scalding. It burned my skin and pushed everything out of my mind. I put myself back in the compound. I set my feet upon those bloody floors inside my head. I pushed away the bones of infants with my toes. I ran my fingers along the stone walls, engraved with spells and infused with the magic that kept the world at bay. Magic that turned angels into humans. Who was I now, if I wasn’t the last Colt?

“Lark?” I heard from outside the door. “You’re going to burn your skin off.”

Caring Gabriel. He was making me soft. He was making me want to turn my back on the life of blood I had been raised into. We needed to get to the Stronghold and hide the tools. Then we needed to go our separate ways. 

We may have been tied together through that magic bond, but we could be far apart. I knew we could.

I didn’t bother finding a towel, I simply got dressed in the same clothes and stepped quickly out of the bathroom. I glanced around the room and found Gabriel gone. 

I didn’t wait for him to come back this time. I went out to my truck and left that small town. My mind was going faster than my truck. I couldn’t tell what were my thoughts and what were Gabriel’s. 

There was a lingering feeling at the back of my neck. My hairs stood on end. I didn’t feel alone in my own truck. “Get out Gabe,” I said sharply and that feeling was gone. 

 

I drove until I couldn’t anymore, not because I was tired, but because I wasn’t sure if my truck could take any more long-distance traveling. 

I found my way to an old hotel and got a room with one king-sized bed. I had never seen a king-sized bed before. It was enormous. My problems with Gabriel were quickly gone from my mind and all I could think about was laying down on that bed and stretching out. 

With my door locked and my shotgun under my pillow, I closed my eyes and tried to sleep but dreams plagued me. If it wasn’t Gabriel, it was my mother. Everything was a jumbled mess.

When I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep, I dressed myself in clothes that were appropriate to walk around town in and I left my hotel. The air was cool and crisp and I zipped up my jacket and shoved my hands into my pockets. Then I started walking. 

I didn’t know where I was going, or what I was going to do when I got there, but it didn’t stop me from putting one foot in front of the other and continuing on. That was the sum of my life. Keep going when I didn’t even know what I was doing. I had to move forward on my own. I had to separate myself from everything else because I was not like anyone else. The last Colt was a lifestyle, not just a description of who I was. 

As the sun came up, I stopped on a bridge and leaned forward on the railing. I stood over a gentle river and watched the light shimmer across the surface. What was I doing? I had walked all night, alone, thinking about nothing except how much I deserved to be locked away and forgotten. But why? Why did my father have to be right? Why did I deserve nothing? Why was I nothing? Because he saw me as worthless? Where was my worth? Who decided my worth if it wasn’t me?

“Gabe?” I asked aloud.

I heard that swoosh of wings and glanced over my shoulder to where he stood behind me, looking off the other side of the bridge. Our journey together started on a bridge, one that I had laced with explosives. I wanted him to leave then, but now, I wanted him there. I didn’t know why.

“Figure it out?” he asked calmly.

I was putting him through hell with my indecision. “I’m sorry,” I said.

He kept his back to me as he said, “You’re not allowed to use that word anymore.”

“What?” I asked, turning around to him. 

“Lark,” he said as he faced me. “You’re fighting everything, all the time. But you don’t need to. You don’t have to. Your father isn’t here. Your brothers aren’t here. It’s just you and me. And sometimes I think my thoughts and feelings go through you, but at the same time, yours overflow on me. I’m not used to that kind of emotion, Lark. You have to give me some time to adjust. I can’t just shut down like you do.”

I stared back at him. I didn’t understand what he was talking about. 

“You’re doing it now,” he said. 

I looked at my hands as if they would show me what Gabriel was seeing. And then I became angry. “You want me to try and be like the rest of those idiots out there?” I asked. “They let their emotions rule them. They’re stupid.”

“They’re free,” he said. “You are still a prisoner in your own mind, Lark. You are a prisoner to your father and that forsaken stronghold you grew up in!” He was yelling.

I stared back at him. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” he sighed and turned away from me. “I wasn’t yelling at you. Please don’t look at me that way…”

I was becoming annoyed. “Like what?” I asked.

“That blank face, Lark,” he said with a sigh. “You look at me and you… You stop feeling everything. You push all emotions away and show me nothing, but I swear to my father I am feeling it. I am feeling everything that you are. I know I am.”

I didn’t know what to say. 

But Gabriel wasn’t done speaking. He turned to me and took two quick steps towards me before hesitating. His hand raised and he brushed a strand of my hair from my face. 

“I need you Lark,” he said. “Just because you push it all away to the back of your mind and fight through it doesn’t mean you aren’t feeling it. You’re just choosing to ignore it. I need you to accept it, all of it, and learn to control it. Or I’m going to get swept away.”

I stared back at him with my lips parted, trying to think. I couldn’t understand how all of this was working. What was happening to us? The more I seemed to try to ignore my non-existant feelings, the more irrational Gabriel was becoming. 

I made the decision to speak. “After we hide Samuel Colt’s things, we’ll look for the Carmodys. Maybe they can help us figure this out. They are a matriarchal family, one of those old women has to know something… right?”

Gabriel gave me a slight smirk. Then he sighed and stepped away from me.

“Gabe?” I asked and he glanced back to me. “Are you going to be okay?” I let him see a little bit of that concern and he seemed to stand up a little straighter.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.” 

 

I was tired. I collapsed on that king-sized bed and glanced to the door to see Gabriel standing with his brows drawn. He seemed confused.

“What?” I asked as I kicked off my boots. 

“You only got one bed,” he said.

That pang of guilt hit me then and I sighed. I opened my mouth to apologize but Gabriel must have seen it coming. He gave me a cross look and I just said through clenched teeth, “It’s big enough, you can take that half.”

It was nice to see that I could still surprise him. He was cautious as he sat at the foot of the bed. Usually, he laid down and turned on the television, but he only sat there.

I tried to make a joke. “If you can only lay next to me when you’re naked, by all means, feel free to strip,” I said. It was a bad joke.

Gabriel’s attention snapped over to me. There was a feeling of dread that washed over me. The fear I felt in the stronghold when we were trapped in the past pulled up that memory in that candlelit room. I remembered sliding his jacket from his shoulder, pulling his shirt over his head. 

Heat flushed my face and I buried it into my pillow. “Stupid joke…” I muttered and felt a twinge of relief slide over me. 

Gabriel made a sound of amusement and turned away from me. His shoulders slumped forward and he hung his head. 

Curious, I moved to the foot of the bed and looked him over. Had the lack of two beds really upset him that much? 

Exhaling a long breath, I rose to my feet and said, “I’ll ask for a room with two beds.”

I barely got a step away when his hand caught mine. I froze. This was Gabriel, I didn’t need to react so fast. I needed to let the tension slide out of me and just turn around.

I was a little more stiff than I wanted to be when I turned to face him. He still held my hand in his, but his eyes were on the floor. I sat back down. We weren’t ourselves, so I couldn’t fault myself or him for anything. We were caught in this strange tornado of restricted emotion and unsaid words. 

It was uncomfortable. Everything within me said to pull away from Gabriel, to reclaim my hand from him and protect myself. But I couldn’t. I had to push the other Colts out of my head. I had to stop hearing my father dismiss my worth. Every time I was closer to Gabriel, things got better. They might have been terrible for a few moments, but overall, things had changed. I liked it. Mostly anyway.

Gabriel held my hand like someone would hold a tiny bird, just the barest of touches. I decided then to actually hold his hand, and I held it tightly. Change could be good. If it led me further into contentment, I could sit with him. I could share my space. I could share my existence with him.

 

I fell asleep. It was a deep sleep. I didn’t dream, only slept for what felt like days. I was woken, however, to the sound of a firetruck blaring its horn. I sat up in bed and Gabriel looked to me, my hand still in his. 

“It’s a parade,” he said.

“I don’t know what that is,” I told him.

He released me and said, “Go look.”

Gabriel remained seated on the bed as I went to the door and opened it. Outside was a long line of people in the road. There were cars and horses and the fire engine blaring its horn. Children lined up along the sides of the road with their parents as little wrapped candies were thrown from the procession.

Gabriel came to stand beside me in the doorway. “What are they doing that for?” I asked.

“They’re celebrating,” he told me.

“It’s weird,” I muttered.

“Not everything that’s strange is bad,” he replied. 

I was starting to understand that. “What are they celebrating?” I asked.

“The anniversary of the founding of their town,” Gabriel said.

“Why would they celebrate that?” I scoffed.

Gabriel shrugged. “Why not?”

That was something I hadn’t considered. Why not celebrate? Why not be happy? They were all smiling.

“There’s going to be a festival at the park,” he said. “Would you like to go?”

I replied, “Why not?”

As the tail of the parade passed us, people began following it, making it a great congregation that followed the excitement to the park. Gabriel and I went with them. 

The grass was greener there. I wasn’t sure what they did with it, but it was the greenest grass I had ever seen. Children ran in every direction, some had superhero capes and others had balloons wrapped around their heads like crowns. There were hotdogs and strange foods I had never seen before. I wasn’t sure if it smelled delicious or deadly. 

There were booths set up with games and I stopped to watch some of the children play. They were throwing darts at a wall of balloons. A little girl paid her dollar and threw her three darts, but they fell short every time.

“Sorry honey,” the game attendant said and then he immediately turned to Gabriel. “You want to try and win something for your lovely lady friend?”

Gabriel scoffed. “She’s a better shot than I am,” he said. 

“Want to give it a go, Miss?” he asked me. Gabriel handed me a dollar. The little girl was watching me intently as I took the three darts. 

Standing beside me, Gabriel said, “The smaller balloons are worth more points. So are the ones that are further away from the others.”

I didn’t understand the concept of points, but he said they were worth more, so I aimed for those and left the game attendant staring at me. 

Gabriel asked me, “Want to play again?”

The man on the other side of the counter said quickly, “What prize would you like, Ma’am?” 

I smirked. The little girl beside me said, “You should get the turtle. Turtles are awesome.”

I picked the largest turtle and handed it to the girl. “Turtles are awesome,” I told her and she looked at me with surprise before taking it in her arms. 

She thanked me and then waved to Gabriel. Then she ran away squealing. 

“That was a nice thing you did,” Gabriel told me.

I shrugged. 

He casually took my hand in his and I had to fight the impulse to pull away. I looked to him and he smiled. He could see, or feel, that I was trying. 

In no time at all, he introduced me to something he was excited about. It was called a funnel cake. I didn’t understand it. 

“How do they make it?” I asked as Gabriel picked at a piece with the most powdered sugar and stuck it in his mouth. 

“Magic. Delicious magic,” he said.

I felt he was joking and I smirked. He held out a piece to me and I shook my head. “Looks sweet,” I muttered.

“New things,” he reminded me and when I resigned to try it, he fed it to me. I liked funnel cake, and it pushed away the thought of how strange it was to be fed.

I plucked another piece from his plate and Gabriel just smiled as we continued walking. 

“What’s that?” I asked as we came upon this strange spinning ride with a line out front. 

“It says it’s called a Gravitron…” Gabriel replied. “It looks like a top…”

“What’s a top?” I replied.

Gabriel reached into his pocket and pulled out a little wooden toy.

“You carry this on you?” I asked.

“No,” he said, as I took it from his hand to examine it. “I just didn’t know how else to describe it to you other than to show you.”

“Of all things, you made a toy,” I replied.

“Want to try the ride?” he asked and I stared at him dumbly. We were supposed to ride in that thing? How? 

As I wondered to myself, the ride came to a stop, the hatch opened and people came out giggling and walking strange. Then one hunched over and vomited in the grass.

“I don’t want to do that,” I muttered.

“Not everyone pukes,” he told me. 

“It spins,” I told him, “I probably will.”

“Try it?” he suggested.

I looked at him and said, “I will not.” 

“Alright,” he replied simply and let it go. I wasn’t expecting that. I realized my eyes were narrowed on him, my shoulders were tense. Was I prepared to fight him over a something so trivial? No, I had been prepared for him to force me. Gabriel would not do that. Ever. 

“How about this one?” he suggested and pointed to something that looked like a group of linked carts on a track. 

“Doesn’t look so bad,” I said. 

So we went on the roller coaster. And Gabriel cheered and smiled and laughed, but mostly, it was at my expense. We sat side by side in this cart at the front of the train and it was fine until it dropped. Then my arms locked on the bar in front of me and I locked my legs in the bottom of the cart and forced my back against the seat. My teeth were clenched so tight my jaw began to hurt.

When it was over, Gabriel threw his hands in the air and said, “Woo!” 

He looked to me and smiled before taking my hand in his again. I felt warmth radiate through him and into me. It took me a moment to get my bearings, but I left the little train of cars and wobbled over to the exit. 

The angel beside me wrapped his arm around my waist and held me steady so that I could take more confident steps. By the time we reached the end of the exit, I was fine. I stepped away from him and smacked him on the shoulder. 

“What the hell, Gabriel?” I shouted. “What is that thing?”

He was biting his bottom lip to keep from laughing and I struck him again. His laughter was something I had never heard before, open and wholeheartedly pure. It was nothing like the sounds that came from the Colts in the Stronghold, there was no malice, no ill-intentions. It was only funny. 

I smiled. 

“I wish you could have seen your face,” he told me. 

“No mirrors,” I muttered.

He glanced across the excitement of the festival to where there was a box. “But there’s a photobooth!” he said excitedly.

“A… what?”

“It takes your picture?” he said.

I stared at him for a moment and then shook my head. “I… I really don’t know anything…” I said. 

“Allow me,” he said and led me to that random box. People stepped out as we arrived at it and they grabbed their photos from the side of the booth. Gabriel was quick to jump in and pull me with him. He pressed some buttons on the screen in front of us. 

“Now smile!” he said and pointed to the screen. 

I did the best I could and he started laughing. 

“Gabe!” I grumbled. The camera flashed. 

He laughed even harder. When the camera flashed again, I was glaring at him. 

“Just smile,” he said. “Or make a funny face.” 

“A what?” I asked.

He stood behind me and put a finger in both corners of my mouth and stretched my face into an awkward smile. Then the camera went off and he doubled over laughing. 

“It’s not that funny!” I told him.

“It really is,” he replied. 

I swiped at him with the back of my hand and the camera caught him rubbing at his chest.

He smiled at me and I smiled back at him. I felt happy. I was content in that strange situation with an archangel, in that strange box. 

And then it got stranger. In an instant, I blinked my eyes and Gabriel stepped close to me. His hands slid down my arms and he pressed his lips to mine. It was such a gentle touch. It didn’t incite me to run or fight, I just stood there as the camera flashed one last time. 

Gabriel stepped away from me suddenly. He swore softly and started apologizing. “I don’t know what came over me,” he said. 

All I could ask was, “What was that?”

“I know,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Now he was confusing me. “No, Gabe,” I said, “I don’t know what that was…”

Inside that photobooth, he stared back at me. I saw his confusion surface on his face and turn to sadness. 

I didn’t like that sadness. I didn’t like that look in his face that made me feel like he pitied my existence. I left that booth and tried not to be angry. 

Through all my years at the Stronghold, I had never seen nor felt a touch so gentle. Even when Crowley had touched his lips to mine, it was no where near the same. There were similar expressions I had seen between my brothers and the women they claimed, but it was so aggressive that it had left me fearful of all contact. I had trusted Gabriel. I still did. But I didn’t know what to think at that moment.

“Lark!” I heard from behind me. 

I turned to see Gabriel jog up to me. “I’m sorry,” he said again. 

I stared at him.

“It’s called a kiss,” he told me. “It’s… like a hug, but it shows that you care a lot about someone. More than a hug.”

“You…?” I asked and pointed to myself. 

“Maybe?” he replied softly. 

I sighed. “I don’t think that’s safe for us,” I said. 

“It could be,” Gabriel told me.

I shook my head. “You know it’s not. You have to stay hidden. You’re an archangel posing as Loki. And I won’t be the reason you die…”   
My hands found his and I held tightly to them. There was an overwhelming urge within me to touch his face. The stubble along his cheek. It still grew on his vessel. I hadn’t seen him shave, but I knew I had seen it shorter before. 

With the slightest of touches, I brought him closer to me until I felt the heat from his body. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against mine. There was peace. This was perfection. Forget about Samuel Colt, the Winchester, everyone. Here with Gabriel, I was invincible. 

I set my head against his shoulder and wrapped my arms around him. I could stay right there. He held me tightly against him. I wasn’t sure if I was hearing my heartbeat, or his. 

I ran my left hand up his chest and I was suddenly distracted by my fingers. My nails were chipped. My fingers were calloused. My hands were scratched and scarred. I was a hunter. Wasn’t I? 

I was a Colt. Wasn’t I?

What was I?

I was here with Gabriel and that should have been enough. Shouldn’t it? 

I was losing my mind. 

I bit my hand hard enough to draw blood and I pulled away from Gabriel as he pulled away from me. He rubbed at his hand as if I had harmed him. 

Before me stood the archangel Gabriel. I was a hunter and we had a mission. “The Stronghold,” I said as my own purpose returned to me. “We need to hide Sam Colt’s crap and find the Carmodys!”

Gabriel nodded. His eyes were so wide.

“What happened?” he asked.

I had a sudden idea. “I’ll go inside the Stronghold with the Winchesters, and you find the Carmody place,” I told him. “If we split up, we’ll cover more ground.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to leave you in that place,” he told me.

I grabbed his hand and pulled it up to his mouth. “Bite,” I said. 

“What?” he blurted.

“Bite,” I told him.

He didn’t hesitate again, and he bit down on the flesh of his vessel until he broke skin. Pain shot through my own right hand and I held it close to me. When I looked down at the injury, there was a new scar marking my flesh. 

“Why?” Gabriel asked.

“We have to stay on task,” I said. “Work through whatever the hell’s going on between us and finish with this. This will be the last time I go to the Stronghold.”

 

The drive was quiet. My hands were so tight on the wheel that it opened the bite I had left on my left hand. I watched the blood drip down and dot my pants. I focused on that, even though my attention wanted to split so quickly over to the passenger in the cab. Why was I so distracted by Gabriel? 

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

He stared at me. “You’re… asking me?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yeah.”

“Something… feels off. It doesn’t feel right to be sending you back into the Stronghold. I want to go with you,” he told me.

That made sense. His concern was pulling me closer. But, was it my own subconscious concern for myself that leaked over to him. I wondered if he was only showing me what I couldn’t show myself. This spell had to be lifted, and soon. I was compromising him.

I had to ask myself, however, what would happen if we allowed my spell to remain? I could bite myself and mark his skin. And he could do the same to me. Were we literally becoming one person?

 

The field was quiet. Just how I remembered it. The trees all around the clearing still provided plenty of shade for hiding and hunting. I got out of the truck and retrieved Samuel Colt’s bag for the last time. I held it tightly in my hand as Gabriel rounded the front of the truck to stand at my side. 

“Lark,” he said softly. 

“I’ll leave the door open,” I told him. 

Those words seemed to ease him. 

The Stronghold was waiting for me like some creature ready to consume what was left of my soul. I was scared.

“That’s why we’re waiting for the Winchesters,” Gabriel told me. 

I wondered how much of my dread he could feel.

“I don’t want to go,” I whispered.

“I know,” he said. “You just have to hide it in there, and then you’re done. You know the Winchesters aren’t even necessary. They’re just a precaution.”

That made me smile. This was nothing I couldn’t handle on my own. We both knew that.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” he told me. 

Those words from anyone else may have been a threat, but from him, it was comforting. The Stronghold wasn’t my home anymore. I lived outside of its walls. I had escaped. And this was nothing.

The roar of the Impala’s engines hit me before I saw the car. I glanced over to Gabriel and found he had disappeared. This was it. 

As the black 1967 Impala came to a stop, I stepped away from my truck. Sam and Dean were almost in sync as they left the vehicle, closing both doors at the same time.

“You look like crap,” Dean told me as they approached.

“Funny,” I replied, “I was going to say the same thing.”

Sam grinned. “You look good, Lark,” he said.

The energy around them had changed. It felt thick. Tense.

“So where are we going?” Dean asked as he looked about the empty clearing we stood in. The grass was green, the birds chirped. He had no idea what we were heading into.

“A room full of bad memories,” I told him.

“You called us out here because you’re scared of the dark or something?” Dean grumbled.

I stared at him. His aggressiveness had my muscles bunching up in my back and legs. Stronghold fight or flight. I had to keep my head about me.

“You want access to my super-secret clubhouse?” I grumbled. “Follow me.”

Too much television.

Before I turned my back on them, I saw Sam give his brother a warning glance. Then they followed me to the center of that clearing. I reached out and grasped at air. I couldn’t see it, but I knew where it was. The moment I grabbed it, a large metal door appeared in my hand. The door to the dungeon of my past. 

“That’s a door!” Dean said quickly.

“It is,” I replied slowly. If he wanted to be aggressive, I could be condescending right back. 

The door was dirtied, but it wasn’t overgrown. In fact, now that the door was in my hand, it appeared as if the grass didn’t even grow near or around it. A dark place.

I slid the bar back on the door and pulled it open. It creaked loudly.

There was a stench inside that made the Winchesters gag. Sam’s eyes began to water. I didn’t notice much. It smelled the same, only a little stale.

I took a deep breath of that putrid air from within and I couldn’t help but feel like I was being welcomed home. I didn’t want to feel like I belonged there, but I did. The tension left my body. I was the last Colt. And this was my castle.

When I descended those steps into darkness, the Winchesters followed me without hesitation. I imagined them as willing sacrifices to the Stronghold. My father would have been happy to see me claiming two and bringing them so quietly to their rooms. He would have found pride that I sought to strengthen Colt blood with that of the Winchesters.

Hunter blood was something that could outrank all of my brother’s women. They were just women. They weren’t strong enough to claim a female hunter. And here I had two hunters of my own. I could have them. If I wanted to.

“Lark?” I heard Sam say and I glanced back to him. 

I stared at him from the dark, his and Dean’s bodies were silhouetted from the light behind them. How fitting. 

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“We’ve been saying your name since we walked in here,” Dean told me.

“We can’t see,” Sam said.

“I’d like to see,” Dean added.

“Afraid of the dark?” I asked.

I could see, not much with that light behind them, but I could see. I resigned to make them comfortable. To my right was the first flint holder. When I was just a child, we left behind the hundreds of torches and built in an oil line. But we never had the chance to really use it. My father considered it was something for special occasions, and we liked it dark and sparsely lit anyway. 

I struck the flint together and a spark caused the line of stored oil along the wall to surge to life. The light hurt.

The Winchesters were happy again. They could see.

I was just grateful that they weren’t asking questions.

Within only a few minutes, I wound us back to the far reaches of the Stronghold. I wasn’t wasting time. I didn’t want to be back there longer than I had to.

The lit oil barely reached this tucked away corner where I dropped to my knees and began pulling at the stones of the wall.

As I widened the hole, Sam said, “I can’t fit in there…”

Dean snickered.

“That’s fine,” I replied. “I just need you to pull me out if I get stuck… Gas N Sip sandwiches have made me bigger.”

Dean chuckled. I didn’t understand why.

Bag in front of me, I pushed it forward into the hole as I crawled into the wall behind it.

This had been my favorite place to hide. The place I would disappear until the anger of my brothers had subsided. I would crawl into it and wall myself in. They never found me there. This was where I placed Samuel Colt’s things: in the dark, in my dark place. I pushed it as far back as I could go and crawled backward to get out.

Silently, I replaced the stones until the wall was whole again.

“You’re bleeding,” Sam said when I returned to the light.

I shrugged. I hadn’t noticed.

It was time to leave, and I was more than happy to. This was my last time in the Stronghold. I was never coming back. This place messed with my head, and I was no longer the heir to this darkness.

I had escaped. I was free.

Reaching the stairs, I felt joy at the sight of the world outside of that open door. I held out my hand to it. I wanted to feel the light again. I couldn’t wait to step over that threshold.

The door shut in front of me. There was such force behind it that it blew out the oil fire along the walls.

I stood in the dark with the Winchesters at my back, and I broke.

It felt as if my insides had been ripped out. I was trapped here. I screamed and pulled on that door until I ripped the flesh on my hands. I beat on the metal until blood dripped from my knuckles.

“Lark!” Sam and Dean shouted my name, but I didn’t want to hear them.

I was screaming, “Gabriel! Gabriel! Please! Open the door! Gabriel!”

I screamed until my throat was sore and I sank to my knees. I was shaking.

Why had the door closed?

Had Gabriel locked me in there? Had that always been his goal? I was the last Colt. He wanted me to breed! Had he chosen the Winchesters? Did Sam and Dean know? Were they in on this?

Winchester and Colt. It was a bold mix. It was a good mix. That child could thrive in the dark. Such a dark place.

“Lark?” I heard Sam’s caring voice. Then I heard him take a step toward me.

I ran at him in the dark. My mind was screaming at me to get away. I struck him with all the force I could muster and knocked him against the wall.

I ran way. I had to hide. It would’ve been foolish to go back to the place I had just unveiled to them, but I still hid in the walls. This time, I was only just a bit closer to a source of water. I could survive until I killed the Winchesters.

I didn’t like that thought. Gabriel was going to make me kill Sam and Dean to get my freedom. If he would even let me go.

But what if the Winchesters were innocent in this? What if they were just as lost as I was and I was going to kill them for nothing? Bobby would be furious.

I wasn’t my father. I had to know.

If they intended no harm, I would have allies, but I couldn’t trust them. Not in here.

This place made people crazy. I could hardly trust myself.

I huddled upon myself and tried to think. I felt so trapped.

A scream echoed off the stone. It wasn’t masculine. It wasn’t the Winchesters. My mind refused to believe that there was a woman still chained where my brothers had left her, but my feet pushed me out of my hole in the wall and I ran toward it.

Another scream came from the same direction, the holding cells. I stumbled as I tried to run faster to the women’s rooms. That was a scream of pain. It could’ve been one of labor. That was the sound I always ran toward; ready to clean up the mess my brothers had made of infants and women.

I shook violently as I reached out to open that first door. When I flipped the light switch, I saw nothing in that room but stains on the floor and walls. We still had power. The Stronghold was still operational.

I was relieved to see that room empty, but there was still someone else screaming. And then I heard the echo of sobs: wailing prisoners.

How were they alive?

I ran to every room, opened every door, turned on every light, until I came to her room. I stopped when my eyes fell upon a woman’s skeleton. In her arms, she clutched the desiccated body of a newborn. I realized then that they weren’t alive.

“What the hell is this place?” I heard Dean’s voice as he stood at the first open door at the beginning of the hall.

The echoes of torture spilled out of the women’s rooms. It was deafening. I covered my ears and saw the Winchester brothers do the same. Pain roared through my head. I reeled and fell against the wall. I sank to the floor, huddled upon myself with my hands against my head.

And then everything was silent.

I was yanked to my feet by strong hands, but it didn’t stop there. I was on my toes with my hands wrenched above my head.

In the light of the women’s rooms, Sam Winchester backed me against the wall and pinned my arms. I couldn’t move.

I looked up into his face. All kindness was gone. His eyes held a look of rage. It was a dominant look that I had seen too often. If I couldn’t get away, I was going to die.

“Sam?” I whimpered. “Sam. Please. Don’t do this.”

“You’re the Colt,” he said, his words tense. There was something about the control in the way he spoke, this wasn’t Sam. I knew it wasn’t. I couldn’t plead for mercy from this.

“Sam?” Dean asked.

“Not Sam,” I said. I looked back at the man that held me, the entity that stared back at me with Sam Winchester’s face. It used his strength to hold me still. His strength threatened me, not Sam. “Who are you?” I asked.

I tried to keep my composure as Sam shouted in my face, “How can you be a woman?”

“Cruel twist of fate,” I replied calmly. I was certain I could handle this, whatever it was. It wasn’t Sam.

“You can’t be a woman!” He threw me. All the strength of Sam Winchester whipped me down the hall and dislocated my right shoulder.

“Lark!” Dean went after his brother. He wrestled with him for a brief moment before he suddenly stopped and looked at me.

Dean wasn’t in control anymore. Whatever had Sam, had Dean, too. I wasn’t safe.

I scrambled to my feet and ran, but they were quicker than me. Dean grasped my wounded arm and wrenched me aside. I stumbled against a door and he pushed me through it into a darkened room.

A light came on above me and I shielded my eyes. Dean was standing in the open doorway. I stepped away from him and my boot crunched on something beneath me. I glanced down to see the remains of a woman that died reaching for the door. I stood on her hand.

The light went out and the door slammed shut. I heard it locking into place. Most of the women’s rooms didn’t have locks. In fact, I knew of only one room that did on that hall. It was the room Gabriel had been held in.

Why did we even have a lock on that one room?

I grew up in this hell and there were things I still didn’t understand.

With another door shut in my face, I was trapped until either they let me out, or I could think of how to escape. I still had hope, however. I wasn’t chained to the wall. I could be free again.

I moved in the darkness, shuffling my feet and knocking around bones, until I reached the bed. I sat upon it and braced my dislocated arm on the bedframe. In one quick jerk, I snapped my shoulder back into place. It got easier to put it back in every time it came out.  
I had to figure out what had Sam and Dean. That was the only way I could figure out how to fight it. I had to figure out how to save them.

Or, I didn’t have to. I could kill the Winchesters. I could put it in the back of my mind and save myself. But, if I did that, I would never be able to look Bobby in the eye ever again. I liked Bobby Singer. He knew me. I couldn’t disappoint him.

For him, I would get the Winchesters home safe.

I stood up and stuck my hands deep into my pockets and walked back to the door. It was straight ahead of me. I tried not to step on anymore bones. This person died lost and alone. She probably starved to death when we never returned. When I never returned.

Hand on the door, I set my shoulder against it and pushed. It was a wooden door. Not to mention, it was old. I wondered if I could break it down.

I suddenly felt weight in the room. There was a presence behind me and I turned swinging.

There was nothing there. I couldn’t hear anyone in my darkness.

The air felt cold. My skin rose into goosebumps and I couldn’t keep from shivering.

I tried a different approach. “Hello?” I asked the empty room. “My name is Lark. What’s yours?”

The room whispered back, “Lark.”

The hair raised at the back of my neck. “Laura Skylark Colt,” I said.

“Wren,” was the response.

Orbs of light flashed within the room. I hadn’t been expecting it and my back hit the door. When had orbs ever given me concern? I was not afraid of orbs!

I balled my hands into fists and held them tightly at my side.

“Wren Carmody?” I asked roughly. My insides were shaking from the cold. I felt weak. “She’s my mother!”

“Carmody…” the room hissed back.

I didn’t like the sound of that.

Something came at me, a woman. She passed through me and I felt all strength leave my body. She took my energy and left me in a heap on the floor.

I had hope before, but now, I had nothing. I was so tired. I was dizzy and I felt bile rising in my throat. I couldn’t even move my toes. 

Behind me, the door opened. It moved only a little. Had she used my energy to set me free? 

I desperately tried to roll over. I couldn’t get to my feet, but I gripped at the gaps between the stones in the floor and slowly pulled myself along. Saliva dribbled out of my mouth as I moved through the door. My priority was hiding again. I was certainly home.

Footsteps behind me made me try to crawl faster. I just didn’t have any strength. When a boot slammed against my ribs with the force to flip me over, I found myself staring back up at Sam Winchester in the faint light from down the hall. My air choked in my lungs as I tried to take a breath. Pain ripped through my side as my ribs tried to expand. 

In one quick movement, he had me by my throat. I grabbed his arm. I scratched at his wrist and kicked at him, but nothing I did phased him. 

“Where do you think you’re going, Red?” he asked. There was humor in his voice. 

“Who. Are. You?” I choked.

“The last Colt?” he asked of me. “How pathetic.”

Holding onto his wrist, I kept from being strangled by my own weight, but only just. “Who’s the one… in the body of a Winchester, huh?” I asked through clenched teeth. 

He held me higher. My head touched the ceiling. 

I didn’t want to believe that something in my room had stolen my energy and let me out only for me to be grabbed by the being in Sam Winchester’s body. When my father ruled the Stronghold, I was still the weakest among them. Now that I was supposed to inherit the Stronghold, the whole compound had turned on me.

I was snapped away from my thoughts when another hand touched my waist. 

“You’re too skinny to be of any use,” Sam told me, his other hand on my body. “But if you’re of Colt blood, you’ll just have to do.”

He lowered his arm and dragged me along the floor as he took one long step after another, back into the room I had only just escaped from.

The light came on and he took me across the room to where the skeleton lay. He kicked the bones away from the chains on the floor. He was going to chain me.

“No!” I shouted. I struggled. I had nothing left, but I tried. I kicked at nothing, I ripped at his flesh. I would not be a victim of the Stronghold. 

“Kennedy!” Sam shouted over his shoulder. 

Dean ran into the room. “I got them,” he said. I saw him glare at the bones on the floor that lay scattered around the room.   
Whatever was in Dean, whoever this Kennedy was, he did not have the experiences of a Colt. Sam was one of us. Dean was not. 

The shackles that had held the skeleton to her death were opened. Dean tried to put them on my ankles and I kicked him in the face. He fell back. 

Sam slammed me against the wall so hard that the world danced in my eyes. It was tunnel vision, everything on the edges of my sight turned black. And then the tunnel closed. I lost consciousness. 

 

My ears were ringing. No. They weren’t ringing. Someone was shouting. 

“Stop!” I heard, but it was stretched out like a terrible scream from far away. 

I opened my eyes and saw nothing. My heart pounded in my chest. I was blind. I waved my hand in front of my face and still saw nothing. 

“It’s okay,” I heard. The voice was so familiar. I knew her. “It’s just dark.”

It was just dark. I couldn’t see my hand because it was dark. Of course.

That settled me. I closed my eyes again and tried to lift my legs. They felt heavy, and I soon remembered it was because chains had been placed on them. I moved my hands beside me, over the rough blanket, the old mattress, the metal bed frame. I swore softly.

I felt weight on the bed at my side. My eyes opened quickly but I saw no one there. I felt my hair move away from my face, the lightest of touches. I felt no threat. It was a kind feeling. It felt of compassion. 

And then it felt of sadness. Sadness for me. A consoling spirit. 

“You have few friends here,” I heard. 

I covered my eyes with my hands. I knew. No one had ever escaped from the holding rooms once they were tethered like a dog. 

“But you remember where you are,” the voice told me.

I sat up in bed. I forgot about the wound in my side and I doubled over.

It was true, however. I knew the route if I managed to get out of the door. If I just managed to get past Sam and Dean, I could get outside.

No. I couldn’t. Something not-physical had closed that door. Either it was Gabriel from the outside, or something on the inside. I was beginning to think, with the change in the Winchesters, that it was likely that Gabriel was innocent in this, and of course, so were they. 

Everything that was trying to kill me was already in the Stronghold. These were my own demons. They had been waiting for me, to make me pay for the sins of my family. It was my turn. It was all in due time. I had been running from the Stronghold my whole life. I had run from being a Colt, from earning my place in Hell. 

Either I would be a victim of the Stronghold, or I would rule it. 

“I’ll rule it…” I muttered.

“No…” I heard. It was such a pleading sound.

I moved my legs so I could set my feet on the floor. My chains rattled as I rose from the bed. My muscles screamed at me. I felt dizzy when I stood. I reached back and found a wound on the back of my head. My hair was matted with blood. 

I could only think to stand tall and stand strong. I had to be composed. I had to show I was not to be injured and command my Stronghold to earn it. If I couldn’t pry it from the hands of deadmen, I deserved to be chained. 

I stood with my hands in front of me and bowed my head. I listened to everything around me. I could hear the water running beneath the compound. How often had I put my ear to the floor when I was a child and wished to be free like that water? Constantly running. Never stuck in the same place. 

If I was going to be stuck, I could be strong. As the last Colt, this hole in the ground was my birthright. I would not be subjected to it again. 

I took a deep breath of the stale air and held it for a moment in my lungs. It felt thick. My chest hurt. 

“Don’t do this,” I heard in that soft and drawn out voice. 

“How many of you are in here?” I asked. 

The silence within the room was deafening. I felt alone. It felt like there wasn’t another soul in all of the Stronghold. Whatever had been in there with me was no longer there. 

The door opened and I closed my eyes. As the lights came on, I slowly opened them. I knew that flash of debilitating light, I knew the tactic to try and disorient the victim even further. 

Sam Winchester stood in the doorway. I stared back at him. Whatever was inside of him, I wanted it to see that I would fight. I let him see my defiance, my strength of will. 

He approached me with quiet footsteps and placed his hand beneath my chin. As I looked up to his face and saw the expression of that strange Colt within, I tried not to feel small. Sam and Dean were both much taller than I was, but this was the first time I saw their height as a threat. 

The way Sam looked down at me, I could see his condescension. 

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

He grinned, a smile I was certain that Sam had never shown. All teeth and ill-will. 

“I am Mathias Colt,” he said, forcing me to look up at him. He stood so close that it was almost as if I were looking straight up. It hurt my neck. The light hurt my eyes. Then he stepped in closer and loomed above me, casting a shadow on my face. 

“Mathias Colt, huh?” I said. I knew the name. If I could only remember why I knew that name, then I could have an idea of how to fight him. 

Standing so close, I could smell him. Not Mathias, but Sam. Sweat clung to his skin, a warm smell that twisted about the scent of gun oil. I liked that smell. I had to quickly remind myself that this wasn’t Sam. Whatever was good and decent about the physicality of the body in front of me was nothing but a trap. A pretty package. 

I tried to remain unmoving before Mathias Colt. I didn’t want him to see me squirm. I was trying to remain calm and keep my heart steady. With his hand on me, I knew he could feel my blood pumping through my skin. 

I hoped I could keep most of my blood inside my body, but the thought was unlikely. As I looked up into the face Mathias Colt had stolen, I knew that if I managed to get out of here alive, we would all be hurt. But I knew I could sacrifice some blood for Bobby. If it would keep him happy. And I knew the Winchesters’ lives would make him happy.

“What do you intend to do with me, Mathias Colt?” I asked shortly.

“Keep you in your place,” he said. “Where you belong.”

“Is it incest if you take me? Since we are blood, after all.” I had gotten too used to speaking to Gabriel, and my smart mouth earned me such a heavy blow to the side of my face that I hit the ground. In a heap of jangling chains and scattered bones, I lay on the floor and curled upon myself. 

My vision danced about. I wasn’t sure I could take too many more hits from Mathias before he knocked my head clean off of my shoulders with Sam’s hands. I wasn’t used to being struck in the face. My father was more prone to cracking whips on my back and my feet. Isaiah had a fondness of red hot metals. Jonah and Isaac hadn’t yet settled upon new ideas of their own. They were pushy, but that was it. 

I assumed Mathias didn’t think it was an incestuous act at all. He stalked toward me with Sam Winchester’s long legs and I kicked out at him. My calm had been destroyed. Panic set in as he grabbed my ankle and pulled me towards him. 

I tried screaming, but no sounds would come out of my mouth. 

Mathias grabbed the chains that led to my ankles and gave them a hard yank. It felt as if he was trying to tear off my feet. 

In one smooth movement, he slammed his foot in the middle of my chest. It knocked the air out of my lungs. I struggled to grab at his leg as he held me down with little effort. It was like stepping on an ant. I clawed at his flesh until he bled, but it didn’t phase him one bit. 

He didn’t appear to even be considering the possibility of letting me go. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins and my flight instinct had been triggered. I had to get away. Everything screamed at me that I had to get away.

I kicked.

Ghost or not, Mathias Colt felt me strike one hard blow straight to his testicles. He fell away from me with a cry of pain and I tried to run. I wasn’t thinking. The moment I hit the end of my leash, my feet were yanked out from under me and I fell on my face.

Footsteps rushed down the hall and I looked up to see Dean standing there. Kennedy. He grabbed me.

“No! You idiot!” I shouted, “Let me go!”

He held my wrists and dragged me back toward the wall. I fought with him, but he had Dean’s strength. Sam and Dean took down demons and other beings head on. They knew how to fight. They knew how to kill. It was in the memory of every fiber of their muscles.

What did I know other than how to run and hide? So far I had survived because no one could see me. After Gabriel made me human, the only way I kept my life was by talking my way out of situations. I had pulled through Crowley’s torture and then talked him out of my own destruction, or servitude. 

I had strength from pulling my own weight, from holding the recoil of a shotgun. But everything I had was what I had gained from climbing trees and running for my life. Isaiah had always been bloodthirsty and relentless. 

I kept trying to kick at Kennedy, but it wasn’t enough. I was just too small to make much of an impact against Dean Winchester. He held both of my wrists in one hand as he used the keys to open up the stationary pair of shackles on the wall. These were the same pair Gabriel had been put in. 

I screamed. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” I shouted at him as he locked my wrists inside those metal restraints. He hesitated and I took that mere second to throw myself towards him. My forehead connected with his jaw and he stumbled back and fell. 

I screamed and pulled at my shackles. Either I was going to lose my hands, or Kennedy would grant me some kind of pity and just let me go. 

Kennedy stared at me, fear in Dean’s eyes. Kennedy was not a Colt. He wasn’t a hunter either. As blood trickled down my arms, I saw his own panic rise. He grabbed the keys to my restraints and fumbled with them. 

“Mathias!” he cried out in fear. He didn’t know what to do with me.

Struggling to sit up, Mathias looked at me and I decided that breaking my own wrists would be worth it if I was able to escape. I gathered my feet beneath me with every intent of running, even if it meant leaving my arms behind me. But Mathias reached me first. There was still pain in his face, in Sam’s face, but it didn’t stop him from putting hands on me. 

He shoved me hard enough in the chest to force me to sit flat. My right ankle twisted beneath me and I bit back the pain. 

I forgot how easily clothes tore. Between two struggling individuals, clothes are fragile. When forcefully removed, they hurt. Denim wasn’t made like it used to be. Not to mention, I had worn those pants for years. Mathias ripped them from my body like they were paper.   
I pissed myself. Fear had gripped me tight and I had lost control of myself. 

Mathias backed off me at the smell. I clenched my legs tightly together. I could see the disgust on his face. He didn’t want to touch me. 

He walked out of the room and turned off the light.

Kennedy was still there. 

The smell of my urine was overwhelming. Since it had come of fear, it was so much worse. 

I shook where I sat. The floor that had once been cold was warm and wet. 

Kennedy shuffled where he sat, but he didn’t seem to be getting up. He took a breath and sounded as if he were about to speak.

I was lost in my own thoughts. My body hurt from head to toe from physical injuries, but what hurt the worst was the fear in my chest. How quickly was I becoming what I refused to be. Had I not peed myself, would Mathias have stopped? Something told me he wouldn’t. The chains on my wrists and ankles assured me that I would give birth to the next Colt. It was only a matter of time.

No. There had to be a way out. I could get Mathias to kill me first. 

“Who are you… really?” Kennedy asked.

I could hardly see his outline in the dark room. 

“They all… they all hate you,” he said, “for a lot of different reasons, but they do.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. 

“All the… all the women that have died here,” Kennedy told me. “They’re still here.”

That echoed within me. All of the women that had died here were still here. It made sense. God could not reach this damned place, and so souls could not find their way to the afterlife. This was limbo. This was Hell. 

“Why are you?” I managed to ask. My words didn’t want to form. Bile sat in my throat. I felt nauseous.

“They told me your father brought me here. Michael?” Kennedy said. “For you.”

My heart sank into my stomach.

“I was going to be a gift to his last child.” His words were full of bitterness. I didn’t blame him. He had every right to hate me.

“Then you all left and forgot about me,” he said. Anger began to rise in his words. “I starved to death in this goddamned hell hole. I starved and cried in the dark not knowing how I got here because you bastards can’t be seen by the living…”

I lowered my head. Kennedy died in the Stronghold because of me. 

“You’re sitting amongst my bones.”

I vomited. I couldn’t even lean over and let everything fall on the floor, it simply went all over me. 

I wanted to say something to him. I wanted to say I was sorry for everything that had been done to him, but his next words cut mine off.  
“You’re nothing like they made you out to be,” he told me. “You’re just as scared as I was…”

I lifted my knees to my chest. I wanted to curl around myself but my wrists were still bound above me. 

Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I said the only thing I could think of. It wouldn’t make anything better, he was already dead. I couldn’t change anything. “I didn’t know anyone was still here,” I said. “I would have come back.”

“Didn’t even think to check?” he questioned roughly.

“If you were born into this, would you ever want to come home?” I replied.

Kennedy fell silent. 

Orbs lit around the room, fading in and out like fireflies. I wondered if I would ever see fireflies again. 

They lit up Dean’s face, but he still looked at me with Kennedy’s consciousness. He wasn’t going to let me go. Even if he believed I didn’t deserve any of this, he would walk away. 

“They hate you because you escaped,” Kennedy told me. “And so did your mother. And so did the only other female Colt that has ever passed through these walls.”

I sighed. “That other Colt was also me,” I said. There was no reason to lie. 

Kennedy scoffed. “Impossible,” he said, “they said that was like twenty years ago.”

“Yeah,” I chuckled. “It’s what happens when you try to keep secrets from an angel and he’s really determined to get the answers. You both end up stranded in your past because his angel magic wouldn’t work in here.”

Kennedy was quiet again. “What the hell are you talking about?” he breathed.

“Forget it,” I muttered. “Mind leaving the door open on your way out? I could use some air back here.”

I heard him scramble forward. “No. Wait a goddamn minute!” he said, his voice raising. 

I thought of Gabriel, what he would have said. I smiled. How confused was I? I couldn’t remember if I was considering him my friend or my enemy. Either way, I missed him. He always had something to say. Even if it didn’t make anything better, he would try.

“What’s so funny?” Kennedy asked. It wasn’t an angry sound. He wasn’t trying to be rough with me, just genuinely wanting to know what on Earth I could consider amusing at a time like this.

“Gabe,” I said. “He wouldn’t like you taking his father’s name in vain.”

“Gabe the witch?” he blurted.

“Gabe the angel,” I said. “He’s bonded to me through Carmody blood magic. It’s how he and Danica Co-- how he and I were able to escape the Stronghold last time.”

Kennedy stood up quickly. I assumed he’d heard the stories from the other trapped souls. 

“What are you?” he asked me, his voice trembling.

“Damned,” I muttered. “Literally. All Colts go to Hell. And this has been confirmed by the demon Crowley.”

He was standing so still that if I couldn’t somewhat see him in the dark room, I would have thought he wasn’t there at all. 

“I guess,” I muttered, “Unless they die in here. Mathias is still here after all.”

And then it clicked. 

Mathias had died here. There was only one known Colt to have ever died within the Stronghold, and he had taken his own life.

“Son of a bitch!” I laughed. My sudden hilarity startled Kennedy and he bolted towards the door. 

When he realized I was sitting there laughing to myself, he edged back into the room. “What…” He couldn’t seem to find his voice. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Mathias the Impotent,” I said. “The disappointment of the Colt bloodline. At least I can still reproduce. He was worthless!”

A hum erupted in my room. This strange noise that vibrated over my skin and made all the little hairs on my body stand on end. 

“That’s why no one knows him…” Kennedy said. 

I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. I thought about it for a second, and then I understood. None of the spirits knew of Mathias because not even the dead paid attention to a man that had not wronged them in that place and was even frowned upon by his own kind for not producing any offspring. The Broken Colt.

There was a Colt that other Colts disliked more than myself. And here he was trying to prove his worth with Sam Winchester’s body. I wondered if his affliction would be translated to Sam’s body, or if I would still have to worry about being bred.

My stomach growled. When had I last eaten?

“Tell Mathias I’m hungry, Kennedy,” I said. I hadn’t meant to sound so rough, but I was hardly as scared of the Broken Colt as I would be of any other Colt. 

I heard Kennedy open his mouth to speak. He then turned in the doorway and hurried away. 

There was no food in the Stronghold. I wasn’t even sure that there would be any bugs around. There was nothing here to feed on. There hadn’t been people here in years. Mathias wasn’t about to step foot out of the compound until I was broken. It was basic training techniques.

My key to getting out was Kennedy. He literally had the keys, and he could be sympathetic to my situation. I didn’t think he was loyal to Mathias. Mathias was just another tyrant to him, like my father.

The orbs had left with Kennedy. I was by myself again, sitting in the dark. I closed my eyes and tried to rest. Everything still hurt, and I wanted to have some kind of energy to fight with Mathias when he returned.

I wasn’t healing. I was weak. I was tired. I hoped Gabriel couldn’t feel what I was going through. I hoped he wasn’t standing on the other side of that door blaming himself. 

I took a deep breath that ended with a sharpness in my chest and pain throughout my ribs. I felt empty. Not just my stomach, but everything. I felt like something was missing. 

 

I slept. Only I could be in imminent danger and find time for a nap. I was dreaming of my truck, of driving to Sioux Falls with Gabriel riding shotgun and having lunch with Bobby. 

I was shocked awake. Cold water doused my body and my breath caught in my aching lungs with a shriek. 

The lights were on. Had I fallen asleep, or was I on the verge of death?

Mathias stood before me, staring down at me with Sam Winchester’s eyes. In his hand was an empty bucket. 

The water was so cold, I couldn’t keep from shivering. 

He set that empty bucket down and turned to lift another one. I braced myself. I closed my eyes, but the water still knocked the air from my lungs. 

He was rinsing my urine and vomit from my body. 

“So you’re hungry?” he said. 

I had been so certain in front of Kennedy that I would not be taken my Mathias, that I was not afraid of the Broken Colt. But staring up at Sam’s face, cold and wet, trembling. My fear rose within me. Just the way he spoke made made me curl upon myself. I locked my ankles together. There would be a fight. 

My fear was instinctual. I couldn’t seem to fight it. I couldn’t hold myself in check.

The bucket in his hand cracked across my face. I felt blood. I saw lights in my vision. I felt hands on my feet and I tried to pull away. There was nowhere to go.

My vision swam, colors blending. I shut my eyes tight. I didn’t need my eyes. I promised myself I didn’t need them. I needed the dark. I could survive in my dark if I just tried.

My legs were yanked straight and I yelped as hands held me above my knees. It was impossible to kick. 

Lips pressed against my neck. A tongue slid along my skin. Every muscle in my body screamed at the tension that gripped every fiber of every part of me. 

He shifted his weight. His hands lifted and I tried to bring my legs up once again, but he was too fast. He sat on my legs and the ligaments in my knees crunched beneath him. 

The cloth of my shirt was violently pulled and it tore with ease. I bit my lip. I couldn’t move. 

“Sam, if you’re in there,” I pleaded, “Please!”

A large hand covered my mouth and shoved my head back against the wall. Sam wasn’t there. I wanted Sam to be there. Sam wouldn’t do this. Sam would never touch me against my will. 

My jaw tightened, my teeth grit together. 

“Please scream,” I heard in my ear. “Nothing would make me happier.”

He moved his hand from my face and I whimpered as they slid down my body to rest on my breasts. I still had my bra, but it was only a thin piece of fabric. And then it was gone, ripped away at the side seams and straps.

It all set in. There was nothing I could do. I was not strong. I could never rescue myself. Hot tears began to fall down my cheeks. 

“Gabriel…” I cried.

“Louder,” I heard, and lips kissed my tears. A tongue lapped them up as if it was sustenance. 

When I wouldn’t say anything, a heavy hand pushed against my wounded ribs and I screamed in pain. “Gabriel!” I choked. I couldn’t breathe. 

His mouth settled on my left breast. He took my nipple between his teeth and pulled. I gasped. I choked on my own spit. I coughed and he sank teeth into my breast, hard enough to mark me. Hard enough to break skin. 

His body slid down mine and he nipped at me until he reached the last place that cloth covered. I couldn’t even speak as his fingertips slid down my legs. I clenched them together. He wasn’t going to get them off that way. I wasn’t going to let him. 

For a moment, he gave up. He was savoring the moment. I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t. No matter how much I pulled at the shackles on my wrists, I only received more blood. I still couldn’t move my legs. 

His tongue slid over my navel and I shuddered. I was powerless.

Fingers tried to slide between my legs. Fingers tried to touch me, tried to push inside of me with fabric still in the way.

I clenched the muscles in my thighs together as tight as possible and he only chuckled. 

“No…” I whimpered. I couldn’t make my voice go any louder. 

“You think a word is going to save you?” he breathed against my lips. 

Mathias kissed me. His lips set against mine so hard that I tasted blood. I felt them bruise. 

The moment he moved away, my voice rose within me. I couldn’t do anything but scream. But I didn’t cry for Gabriel. I cried for Kennedy. I screamed his name.

It echoed through the Stronghold as Mathias tried to pull my legs apart. 

Footsteps.

A rush of feet came towards me. In a moment, my legs were free. I drew them to me and tried to open my eyes.

Everything was a blur, but I could hear the impact of fist against flesh. 

And then it was quiet. 

A figure neared me. I closed my eyes again. Fingertips touched my bruised face and I turned my head away.

Keys jangled and my hands were free. Then so were my ankles. I huddled upon myself. 

“I thought I could just sit there…” I heard Dean’s voice. Kennedy’s words. “I thought I could just let it happen, but I couldn’t. I tried covering my ears. I tried telling myself you deserved it. I’m so sorry…”

I had to find something to wear. I had to cover my body. I had to hide every inch of me. 

“I don’t know if he’s still in that body,” Kennedy said.

I moved away from the wall, a painful shuffling. “Chain…” I couldn’t speak. I coughed and sank towards the floor. “Chain him up,” I breathed against the stone. “And… don’t leave Dean’s body. Not just yet.” I didn’t want Kennedy to leave Dean and then Mathias jump into him. 

Kennedy snapped into action, dragging Sam’s unconscious body towards me. Toward where I had been bound.

It was agony trying to find my feet. Each step to leave that room was worse than the last. It jarred every part of me. I tried to walk on my toes, but it was impossible. I dragged my broken body down the hall.

Isaiah’s room was just as we had left it after he had died. My father had turned it into a shrine and left everything in its place. Every gun, every misplaced bullet casing, even his clothes. 

I dropped the tattered remnants of everything left on me to the floor. I stripped the last piece of clothing from my body that had kept Mathias Colt at bay. I didn’t want it touching me. I didn’t even want to keep my boots. 

Isaiah had a pair of worn blue jeans that were just small enough to fit me. I slowly pulled them over my bare lower body and they still sat large on my waist. I never remembered Isaiah being so much bigger than me. Maybe it was all in my head. I felt so small, everything felt overwhelming as I fought to pull one of his shirts over my head.

When that didn’t work, I took his favorite coat, a well preserved black peacoat and just wore that. I was still cold, but I was certain that wasn’t the reason I was still trembling.

I was walking back towards the holding rooms, leaning heavily against the wall, when Kennedy came running up to me. I stopped and he did the same, only watching me. 

“What now?” he asked. 

I couldn’t keep myself standing any longer. I slowly slid down to the floor and leaned my head against the wall. My vision was still off. My head hurt so bad. 

Kennedy sat across the hall from me. I was grateful that he didn’t want to sit so close to me. 

The coolness of the wall felt great against my skin. 

I couldn’t stay awake. Filled with pain and with my adrenaline wearing off, I closed my eyes and passed out. 

My own dreams were too tired to come out. My brain had shut down into peaceful darkness. My darkness. I never wanted to leave that comfort.

 

Dim firelight warmed my skin. I opened my eyes and glanced up to see the torch above me lit. A thick, rough blanket was draped over me. Kennedy was nowhere to be seen. 

My neck was stiff as I tried to push away from the wall. There was no strength in any part of my body. If I had to crawl again, I would. I felt like I was threatening my body with more tortures. I felt like if I did it enough, it would grant me the strength to walk down that hall.

I pushed myself to my feet and nearly fell right back down. I was dizzy. I wanted to vomit. I just wanted to sleep, but I couldn’t, not because I had other things I needed to do, but because I knew the rest my body wanted was the final kind. 

Dragging myself along the wall, I came upon the room I had been chained in. This was Gabriel’s room. This was Kennedy’s room. This was my room. And now, the light on inside, it was the room of Sam Winchester and Mathias Colt, if he still chose to reside in that body. 

Kennedy sat on the bed, watching the unconscious body that was restrained against the wall. I didn’t like seeing Sam there. 

Kennedy finally saw me and rose to his feet. 

“You didn’t kill him… did you?” I asked.

“He’s still breathing,” he told me. 

That was all I cared to hear at that moment, and I kept going. Kennedy was slowly following me, keeping his distance. 

I made my way to the infirmary and barely managed to lay on the table. 

Standing in the doorway, Kennedy said, “I tried to open the door. It won’t open.”

“It only opens for a Colt,” I replied, closing my eyes once again.

“It didn’t open for Mathias either,” he added.

“I guess we all die down here,” I muttered. 

“Lark,” he said and my eyes shot to him. It was weird hearing my name again. 

“Ask the other ghosts why we can’t get out,” I said. “If it didn’t open for Mathias, then it probably isn’t going to open for me.”  
Kennedy walked away. I closed my eyes again.

“They don’t want to be left here,” I heard and I looked around. It was that same feminine voice I had heard at the beginning of this mess. 

I didn’t want to care. What could I do to free a bunch of trapped spirits? Why hadn’t they just flown out of the Stronghold when I had left the door open. 

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and tried to think. If I wanted to leave with both Sam and Dean, I had to do something with Mathias Colt. I had to keep him from using Sam. And then I had to open the door. If it was the dead keeping it closed, then I had to appease them as well.

Sam first. The Winchesters were the most important thing. I was afraid I was going to have to use magic. In my state, I was sure it would kill me. But I had to try. I had to keep moving.

I sat up and stared at the open door. I didn’t know any spells. I didn’t know how to do what I wanted to do, or what would really happen after I did it. 

My head felt like it was splitting in two. It was so hard to think.

Gabriel and I had gotten out before because I tied us together. I made his blood mine. I made him a part of me so that he could access the Stronghold’s power as a Colt. That way, he could use his own angelic magic to free us. 

Then magic could be used by a Colt. I had been grasping at straws before. I didn’t even know that that would work. Now I was doing it again. Colt magic worked in this place, as had the Carmody magic within me to create the bond. 

This made no sense. I couldn’t even follow my own thoughts. 

“Lark?” Kennedy’s voice pierced my confusion. “They don’t want to be stuck here.” he told me. “Unless you can free their souls, you’ll be stuck here, too. And so will your friends.”

“Of course…” I muttered. 

It was all live or all die. It didn’t matter anymore if I had any reservations about using magic. 

“I’m not strong enough,” I said, more to myself than to Kennedy. “Gabe had drawn on me for strength. I have no one.”

There was no magic in the Stronghold but mine. 

A shout echoed through the compound. Sam was awake. 

I stepped off of the table and immediately crashed against the wall. My legs didn’t want to work. Kennedy hesitated and simply moved away from me. He would’ve been a good man if he had lived. He paid attention. 

I gripped onto a counter as I forced myself to move. With a lack of balance, my hand fell upon something sharp and I withdrew and fell to the floor. 

“Lark…” Kennedy said as he knelt before me. “He’s not going anywhere. Take it easy.”

“If it’s Sam,” I said, “He needs to know he’s okay. He needs to know I’m going to get him and Dean out of here alive.”

“Just take a breather,” he told me, “I’ll go talk to Sam.”

I wasn’t sure if that was the best idea, but Kennedy left me then. Sam was still shouting. His voice was haunting. I hated hearing him like that. 

Then he was quiet. I imagined Kennedy had reached him. Now he was trying to convince Sam that this was all going to be okay.

I heard Sam suddenly shout my name. I couldn’t move. I wished I had the strength to move. My hands flat on the floor. My teeth grit together. I didn’t want Sam to be afraid. 

“Please…” I begged my body. I had to get up from the floor. 

I took a deep breath and made myself rise to my feet. I dragged my bloody hand across the wall to steady myself as I went back to Sam. He was still yelling. He swore at Kennedy and threatened him to leave his brother alone.

When I reached the doorway, I leaned heavily against it and said, “Sam…?” It was all I could get out.

He fell quiet. I gripped to the wall and a cool calmness washed over me. I was able to stand a little straighter. 

“Kennedy,” I said, “Let his wrists go.”

As Dean’s body did what I said, Sam watched me as if I had betrayed him. There was such suspicion in his face that I couldn’t even look at him. His jaw was tight. This was not the look of Mathias Colt. This was Sam Winchester. They were nothing alike. I was happy to see Sam. 

“I need you to trust me,” I told him. 

The open defiance in Sam’s face made me step back. He wasn’t going to trust me. I was going to have to keep him in the dark. I wouldn’t be able to tell him any of my plans. When his wrists were free, he leapt to his feet and ran at me. 

Kennedy leapt on him and rode his body to the ground, wrenching his arm behind his back. Even if his ankles were still chained, he still had quite a bit of room to move. 

“Let me go, Lark!” Sam shouted at me.

I was gripping the wall again. I didn’t want to be afraid of Sam. My other hand hurt. I had ripped it open on a nail that protruded from the doorframe.

“Kennedy,” I said softly and tightly clenched my hands, as if it would rid them of pain, “Get off of Sam…”

Another wave of chilled Stronghold air slid through my skin. I shivered in Isaiah’s coat. I took a deep breath and waited for Kennedy to leave Sam. When he was at a distance, I ordered him to free Sam’s feet.

Sam laid still on the floor as Kennedy approached him. I kept an eye on him. I watched Sam’s face. At any sign of Mathias taking control, I would lock him back up. I needed a way to confine Mathias. I need a way to bind him to the Stronghold so that we could escape. 

I had been distracted. I didn’t see the moment that Sam changed. The moment he wasn’t Sam anymore. He planted a boot in Kennedy’s face and reached down to free his other foot.

My hands planted against the stone of the doorway. I wasn’t going to let him leave that room. He was going to have to go through me. 

My blood chilled in my veins. I was shaking as he took a step towards me, grinning. I wouldn’t let that happen again.

“Mathias Colt!” I shouted. “Stop!”

The lights flickered in the Stronghold. The torches along the wall behind me dimmed.

I suddenly saw everything. I saw the compound in its expanse. I saw walled up rooms that hadn’t seen visitors since Samuel Colt. I saw rooms occupied by nothing but skeletons. In one of them, wrapped in the skeletal arms of a mother, was a desiccated infant. I could see what was left of the child. A mummified little boy. There had been a male Colt born after me…

I saw outside, nothing was there but my truck and the Impala. It was quiet outside. Deer grazed and birds flitted about. Outside, the world carried on as if nothing existed within the Stronghold.

I could see the distance between Mathias and myself. I could see the distance between Kennedy and the chains on the floor.   
I felt so cold. 

I returned my attention to Mathias. I truly saw Mathias then. Short. Angry. Dark hair and dark eyes. Along his bare arms were long cut marks where he had taken his life. I imagined him separating from Sam. I didn’t want him in Sam’s body. If anything, he could reside in the body of the mummified son of Colt. I didn’t care. If we could all get out and he was unable to leave, I would be happy. A part of me delighted in the idea. To Hell with the Colts. Let this be Hell for him like it was for so many others. 

He was suddenly gone from where he stood before Sam. 

The lights returned to full strength in the room. Sam stared at me. It was Sam. I knew that face. Sam Winchester was free.  
Kennedy was still in Dean, but he stared at me with fear in his eyes and the look made me want to retreat. I took a step back, my hands leaving the walls. My strength was gone. My vision swam and turned to darkness. 

 

The Stronghold door was closed. I stared at it and gripped it tight. I put everything I had into opening that door. I would tear it from the hinges if I had to. 

It creaked and groaned as it moved. Sunlight poured in and I winced in pain. I breathed in the fresh air. There was a god.

I glanced behind me to Kennedy. He had left Dean’s body. I could see him. Handsome. Such a kind face. Kennedy had saved me. I was ready to set him free.

We had devised a plan. The only way they could leave was passing over the threshold with a Colt. I offered them to pass through me. I would stand on the dividing line. I offered them my story in return for theirs. I wanted to know all the souls that were trapped there. I wanted names. I wanted to be able to honor them. 

One by one, a river of sadness flowed through me. Soul after soul. Name after name. Story after story. I took them into me within the Stronghold and freed them on the outside. They passed from one hand through the other. 

Mothers, sisters, wives. They had all had lives before they had been trapped here. They had all seen Hell within the Stronghold. Finally they would be free.

At last it was Kennedy. I witnessed his life and his death. I felt his thanks. Outside, I felt him hold onto my hand with all the grip his soul could muster. “It’s okay, Kennedy. It’s time to go.”

There was a mass of lights sitting before my truck five-hundred and eighty-one souls. One was too many. 

I felt warmth against my hand and turned to see a woman standing before me. The sunlight passed through her. She was pretty. Her dark hair fell around her shoulders in waves. She smiled with her eyes as she held my hand. Lillian Milton. The mother of my brothers. 

“I’m so sorry,” she said and departed. 

All souls ascended to heaven in one giant wave of light. I couldn’t help but smile. 

Turning around, I ran back into the Stronghold. Where had Sam and Dean disappeared to. 

“Sam!” I called. “Dean! Time to go! Let’s get the hell out of here!” 

No matter what had happened, it was time to leave. I could push it all out of my mind. I could think nothing more of Mathias. I could look at Sam Winchester the same way I had before. I knew I could. 

“Come on! I don’t want to stay in here forever!” I said. 

Sam stepped out of the infirmary. His left eye was blackened. His lip was busted. Kennedy had certainly done a number on him. 

“Sam, get Dean, let’s go,” I said. Sam wouldn’t look at me. I wondered how much he remembered. I hoped he wouldn’t. 

“Dean!” I said loudly and stepped into the infirmary. I was going to yell at them for dragging their feet, and then I stopped. 

Laying on the table was a body. She wore a black peacoat and ill-fitting jeans. Her red hair was a mess on her shoulders. Her face was covered in dark bruises. From her closed eyes, her nose, and the corners of her lips came streams of blood. 

My body was nearly unrecognizable in my own eyes. I wasn’t leaving the Stronghold in one piece. 

As I stared at my physical form. I could see blue lines appear to etch across my skin. They flowed as if blood in my veins. I touched my hand and it went through my physical body.

“Sam…” Dean said suddenly and drew my attention.

He was looking at my other hand, watching it turn into the dark gray stone that the Stronghold was made out of.

“Shit,” Sam swore. “Dean help me put her on the floor.”

“Why?” I asked, but Dean did as his brother suggested. 

They lifted my battered form and placed me on the floor. Then it made sense. My body was turning to stone. I would’ve broken the table and possibly shattered. There would have been no returning to it. 

The brothers stepped back. I was a statue. 

The magic I had used was the exact kind that flowed through the Stronghold, that had kept this place secret. Colt magic. I had used the Stronghold to save Sam. Now the Stronghold wanted it back. 

I no longer had a body. I didn’t know if I would get it back. 

“Alrighty,” I said. “You two get out of here.” I realized they couldn’t hear me and I focused myself and tried to push at Sam. He took a step forward, away from my stone form. He looked back, confused.

“We can’t move her…” Dean said solemnly.

“That’s fine,” I muttered. “Just leave me here…” 

“Maybe Bobby can help us figure something out?” Sam suggested.

“Probably not,” I sighed. 

Dean was looking at his phone. “I don’t get signal,” he said. His teeth were clenched together. His eyes were watery.

“Of course you don’t,” I grumbled. Then I glanced to him and saw him shed a tear. Dean Winchester was crying for me. I spun around to see Sam wipe at his red eyes. 

“Don’t do that, guys…” I whined. I never wanted to cry again. I never wanted to shed another tear or see another tear. It reminded me only of Mathias. 

“Let’s… see if we can get a hold of Bobby,” Sam said. 

Finally, they were leaving the Stronghold. 

I followed them up the stairs, and as they left the entrance, I paused at the threshold. 

I saw Gabriel standing beside my truck. The Winchesters didn’t see him. 

He ran to me and stopped short. I didn’t know what to say. And all he said was, “Lark… I’m sorry.”


	14. Gabriel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel and Lark finally visit the Carmodys, but there is still uncertainty and riddles. Can the Carmodys be trusted?

Chapter 14: Gabriel

When I had sent Lark and the Winchesters into the Stronghold, I had assumed that there was no possible way of things going wrong. Lark even left the door open. There was no one home. All of the Colts were gone except for Lark. 

And then that door shut. It felt as if my insides had been pulled out. It had felt as if I was ripped into pieces. Agony had dropped me to the grass and I couldn’t stand. 

Then it was gone. Everything was gone. I glanced around me and I couldn’t understand why I was laying in a clearing in the woods with the Winchesters’ empty Impala.

Bewildered, I decided to leave. 

I was in a town whose name I didn’t care much for, eating chocolate ice cream, when I realized there was something wrong. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t care about missing a few insignificant days, but I couldn’t remember everything. The recent past was this mashed-up copy-paste cut job. When I tried to remember, I became frustrated. There was a giant wall in my way that only let me imagine that I had been talking to myself for quite some time on a human scale as if there had been someone with me. 

I glanced around. While I enjoyed the company of humans, there was something off about how I stood with my ice cream with people around. I used to sit near them, listening. Now I stood removed, at a distance where I could still be around them but not nearly so close. 

Within a few short moments, my mind was overrun by thoughts. My ice cream was left to melt in my hand. I threw it away, wiped my hands and then set them into my pockets.   
There was something in my right pocket. I pulled it out and found myself staring at a strip of photographs. 

I scanned them, and paused at the last. Why was I kissing this woman? This stranger. Why would I want to remember it in a photobooth? How important was she that I wanted to be seen with her. 

She didn’t look very important. Plain. No makeup. She wasn’t particularly groomed like most human women had a habit of doing. Red hair, sharp blue eyes. But she was smiling. Something about that smile piqued my interest. 

I flipped the strip of paper over in my hand. There was scribbling on the back, my own handwriting. It said, “Lark Colt, 2007.” 

I didn’t remember being part of this, but there I was, kissing this redhaired stranger in a photobooth like some teenage human boy. I couldn’t shake the feeling within me that I needed to find her. 

I walked around the corner of a building and disappeared into my world. I needed silence. My head was pounding. What kind of magic was affecting me like this? What kind of force, other than God’s own hand, could send me reeling? 

In my own world, I sat down in the darkness. I couldn’t think. It felt as if I would make more progress physically banging my head against an actual wall. 

I thought to search for that woman in my picture. I found her sitting on the front porch of a ranch house. In her hands was a thick book and she had her feet propped up on a bench before her. 

I went to her and the moment she saw me she was on her feet. The book fell to the deck.

Her hand had gone to the small of her back. She clutched at a blade I couldn’t see. “It’s you,” she said. “You startled me.” 

She began to relax. 

“You know me?” I asked.

She didn’t sit down, but she released the knife and set her hands into her pockets. “A brief meeting,” she said. 

There was something about the way her mouth formed those words made me watch her a little closer. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but this wasn’t the girl in the picture. They were the same physically, but they didn’t present themselves the same way.

“Is this you?” I asked and held the photo strip out to her.

She frowned. “That…” She took it in her hands and looked it over. “I… I don’t have any memories of this,” she told me. “And I think I’d remember a photobooth kiss like that. It’s super cliche’. And really corny.”

“I think it was my idea,” I said.

“No offense,” she muttered. “Wow, she really does look like me.” Then she seemed to examine it closer as she retook her seat. “Or… I really look like her, right?”

The way she spoke suddenly brought memories back into focus. We had spoken before as she filled her car with gas. She was a shapeshifter. “Arlene?” I asked.

She nodded. “That’s my name,” she replied. “I never got yours.”

I opened my mouth and shook my head. This was not the woman I was looking for. “What did we talk about?” I asked.

“My brother,” she said. “And…” She stopped and held her head. Her blue eyes looked up to me and she seemed so lost. “I can’t remember.”

“I can’t remember her,” I said.

“I should know her… shouldn’t I?” she said. “If I took her form. I should know her.”

Panic was starting to raise in her voice. I sat beside her. “Just calm down,” I told her softly. “We’ll figure this out.”

She was breathing hard, her chest heaving. There wasn’t any reason to be so fearful.

“I’ve felt like this before,” she said, on the verge of crying. “I can’t remember why but I’ve felt this before! Why can’t I remember anything?”

“What happened to your brother?” I asked.

She cupped her hands over her eyes and sobbed. She didn’t know. 

None of this made sense. I felt as if I had been trapped in one of my own tricks. I felt powerless, for the first time since I had run away from Heaven. I couldn’t stop Michael and Lucifer’s squabbling, and now I was stuck missing something in my memory. 

Had it just been me, perhaps I would have just moved past it eventually and gotten over it. But I had trouble with the fearful cries of humans that never deserved such treatment. Innocent people. Though, while this woman was a shapeshifter, a monster, she still had human emotions. And while I still could have looked past it all and smited her for being a monster, she was not dangerous. And she was a part of this curious situation that I wanted an answer for.

I let her cry her tears and just sat and listened. “Was it a hunter?” I thought to ask. That was the only thing I could think of that a shapeshifter would fear. A hunter out there was enough to make her crumple upon herself.

She paused, her tears still streaming her face, but she was quiet. “Yes,” she finally said softly. “I know it was a hunter. There was a hunter.”

That made even less sense. There were no hunters with this kind of power. To hide, to simply cease existing, even in memories. I wanted to meet this person. This was a kind of trick I would use. I was more than intrigued by the audacity of such a person to try to pull the wool over my eyes. 

“I would ask if there are any hunters that we both know, but if we did, we wouldn’t be able to place him,” she said. 

“Her,” I replied, and motioned to the form she had taken. She looked at herself then. 

“Why is this so hard?” she sighed loudly and ran her hands over her long red hair before pulling it over her shoulder. “I don’t even think I know any redheads!” 

I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did. Her frustration quickly changed to humor and she chuckled softly. 

“What a mess,” she said. “I’ve had this form for ten or eleven years I think. I grew with it.”

“You were hunted by… what? A fourteen year old girl?” I asked.

“Screw you,” she grumbled, “I remember it was scary!”

“Fourteen year old girls are terrifying,” I replied. It was the reason I had left high school janitorial services and went to a university. The chittering of teenage girls pretending to be more than what they were, wanting to be something with no value or respect for themselves. Not like undergrads were much different. 

Graduate students, however... There was always something appealing about the sexy librarian look. 

Arlene looked to me then. “What are you?” she asked. “If you’re hanging around with hunters.”

I didn’t know how to respond. Who was I, indeed. Did this mysterious hunter really know who I was? Or was I just a trickster? What had I done to deserve a photobooth kiss with a redhaired hunter who had been scrubbed from my mind? 

“I wonder who she thinks I am,” I muttered.

Arlene stared at me. “Who do you tell people you are?” she asked.

How had this search for this unknown hunter with a doppleganger sitting beside me suddenly become about me? 

“You can’t tell me?” she asked. When I said nothing, she added, “Do you remember?”

“I know who I am,” I replied a little coarser than intended. “But I don’t know what I told her.”

“And it’s not something you can tell me,” she sighed. “Don’t we both feel ridiculous,” she muttered.

I looked at her and couldn’t hide my confusion.

“Neither of us know who we are,” she said. “In a sense.”

I didn’t feel well. 

Gently, I took the strip of paper from her. I flipped it over to the back. 

“Lark Colt, 2007,” Arlene read. “That her name?”

I hung my head. “I’m assuming… Her name. She looks like you. But I don’t know anything about her.”

Arlene chuckled. “Just a bunch of hunters named after guns. Winchesters and Remingtons, and now Colts. You think she’s related to Samuel Colt?”

“That’s stretching it a bit,” I replied. As far as I knew, Samuel Colt had no children. He lived alone at the end, and he died alone. 

“How would a Colt get that kind of power?” she asked, staring at her feet. “To just disappear… And no one can remember her.”

“Crossroads deal,” I shrugged.

“A crossroads deal could get past you?” she asked. “Whatever you are.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Maybe…” she began again, “Maybe she gave you a fake name?” She rubbed her temples as if trying to get rid of a brewing headache. “Maybe I gave you a fake name?”

“You said this wasn’t you,” I replied.

She shrugged. “Seems like I wouldn’t even be able to tell you if it was,” she told me.

That made little sense, but it made more than a phantom stranger that neither of us could remember. 

“So you’re Lark Colt?” I asked her.

“Let’s entertain the idea that I am,” she replied. “I’m not. But for brainstorming purposes, say I am.”

I couldn’t stand it. I started pacing. I held my head. None of this made sense.

“What do I call you?” she asked.

I paused in my steps and didn’t know what to say. Everyone called me Gabriel,Trickster, or Loki. Arlene seemed smart enough to ask more questions and draw her own conclusions with those names. 

“Gabe,” I said. No one called me Gabe. 

“Well, Gabe,” she said, “It’s starting to get a little late. Want to move this conversation inside?”

In a different world, this would have been a strange request. But with both of us knowing so little about the same nonexistent person, it seemed like the only thing to do. I was hoping that if we took our minds off of it for just a moment, we might figure it out.

Arlene disappeared into her kitchen and returned with a cup of coffee. “Would you like some?” she offered. I shook my head.

She turned on her lamp beside her chair and sat down as I sat across from her upon the sofa. 

“I wonder…” she said softly, “how long we’ve been looking for her.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Is it just today? Or have we lost her before? Do we keep forgetting we’re looking for her?”

I leaned forward and set my head into my hands. I hoped that was not the case. 

“If she is a real person,” Arlene said, “and she isn’t me at all, I feel bad for her. What if she can’t help but be forgotten?”

I stared at her. “You mean…” I began and she nodded.

“What if we’re the only ones that know she’s missing?” she said, “What if no one else even knows she exists? And someone put a spell on her, not us?”

“Whoever cast a spell like that is a dick,” I muttered. 

“Someone must have really hated her…” Arlene sighed. “Poor girl.”

 

After what Arlene said, I didn’t want to stop thinking about this woman, this Lark Colt. I was afraid if I did, she would simply cease to exist altogether. No one should have to live in that kind of loneliness. 

I focused on that picture of the two of us. I was so comfortable beside her. 

Come morning, I was still thinking about her. And apparently Arlene hadn’t slept because of her own thoughts. I heard, “Damn it!” from the kitchen and went to her.

“What is it?” I asked when I saw her sitting at the island counter, her red hair tied in a braid over her right shoulder. 

In front of her was a piece of paper. In her hand, a pen.

“I can’t remember anything that we were talking about last night,” she said. “I just know… there’s a girl.”

I stared at her, had she forgotten?

I handed her the picture and she looked at it and exclaimed, “Right! She looks like me!”

She wrote it down. 

“Her name is Lark Colt,” I added.

“Yes!” she said and wrote it down. 

“She’s a hunter,” I said.

She nodded and wrote that down. I glanced at her paper to see what she had written. There were only two things on the paper: Lark Colt, and hunter.

“I thought we had a third thing,” I said.

“I thought so too,” she sighed. “I just can’t remember what it was.”

I looked at the picture and it snapped into my memory. “She looks like you,” I told her.

She looked at the picture and said, “She does!”

Arlene scribbled it down and then I looked back at the page to see what we had. All that was written was: Looks like me, and Lark Colt.

I sat down frustrated. What was that third thing? Why couldn’t we remember what we had talked about.

“This is exhausting,” Arlene sighed. “I wish we could find her…”

I crossed my arms on the counter and set my head upon them. I had never had something like this happen to me before. That I could remember, anyway.

Realizing there was nothing else she could do, Arlene set about making herself something to eat. There was something about Americans and bacon and eggs for breakfast. I admit it smelled good, but it wasn’t something I would eat. I wondered if it was something Lark would eat. 

I chuckled to myself. No, she was adamant to eat expired Gas N Sip sandwiches. One day, I was certain she would die from it. I shook my head. No, it was fresh produce that would kill her first. She had the stomach of a vulture. 

I jumped to my feet, knocking back my chair. Arlene’s spatula had dropped and she stared at the stove as if it wasn’t there.

“Lark,” she said softly. “Lark Colt.”

Everything came rushing back to me. 

I had left her in the Stronghold.

I was there as soon as I remembered. Shining souls gathered outside of the open door. There were so many of them, and yet they left the dungeon single file. I couldn’t see anything through the mass of light. 

Then, they were all gone. The door was still open, but I didn’t see Lark. I waited. It was eating at me. How could I have forgotten her?

As the Winchesters came up the stairs with tears in their eyes, I made myself invisible and watched them walk towards their car.

And then I saw Lark. She looked directly at me. I wasn’t sure how she saw me. I ran to her, and as I neared, I understood.

On the threshold of the Stronghold was the spirit of Lark Colt. I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to accept that she had died in that place. I opened my mouth to speak but the only thing that came out was an apology. It was my fault she had gone back in there. It was--

She interrupted my thoughts. “Gabe,” she said. “Shut up.”

I stared at her. She was smiling. The smile was infectious. It was wholehearted, like nothing else I had seen when she had her physical body. 

“You’re dead,” I said softly.

She shrugged. “Kinda. But hey, look on the bright side. I have no body, so there’s no blood. No blood. No blood bond! You’re free, Gabe.”

My legs went out from beneath me and I knelt on the grass. 

She knelt before me. “You… should be happier about that,” she told me. “Smile a little. The mission was a success. Sam Colt’s crap is hidden. You’re free. Hell, I’m free and I didn’t go to Hell. This is kind of nice.”

“Nice?” I asked softly. “You’re dead…”

“Mostly, anyway,” she assured me. “But it was either this, or Sam and Dean never would have gotten out of there.”

“You died for them?” I asked. I didn’t understand why she would throw her life away for the Winchesters. That wasn’t what she did.

Then she told me the whole story. She glossed over some parts, but none of it appeared to have bothered her. 

At the end of her tale, she stood and pushed the door to the Stronghold closed. “So some dumbass doesn’t wander in there and get stuck,” she chuckled. “Only a Colt can open it.”  
I waited to feel that pain again that I had felt before, but it wasn’t there. Everything felt hazy. I felt empty. 

“What will you do now?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “Wait for my reaper, I guess?” she said. “Do whatever I want until then. What about you?”

“I’d…” I didn’t know what I wanted to do. “I’d still like to find the Carmodys,” I told her. What else did I have to do? I wanted to know the end of the story. What happened to Wren Carmody if what Lark said was true and she didn’t die inside the Stronghold with the other women. 

“You gonna drive or fly?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well,” she said to me, “whatever you do, could you do something with my truck. I’d hate to see it in pieces. Take it to the Carmodys and tell them they can use it.”

“You don’t even want to know?” I asked.

I was much more curious than she would ever be. 

“I’m dead, Gabriel, what’s it matter?” 

It mattered to me. She was the only one in all of Heaven and Earth that knew who and what I was, and now we were parting ways. I didn’t have to pretend to be anything with Lark.   
“I could try and bring you back,” I said.

“Your magic doesn’t work in the Stronghold, Angel-boy,” she said snarkily. “Did you forget?”

I opened my mouth to speak and she shook her head.

“Gabriel, there’s no bond. You’re not tied to me or the Stronghold so there’s nothing you can do but turn human if you go in there,” she warned me, as if I didn’t know. 

I felt useless. 

Frustrated, she groaned and grabbed my shoulder, pulling me to my feet. Her touch felt of power, the light of a human soul. 

“Come on,” she said and pulled me toward the truck. “Start driving.”

“What?” I asked.

“I can’t just leave when you look at me like I just destroyed your reason for existing. Damn, Gabe, just drive the truck and I’ll tag along,” she griped. Then she glanced to me and said, “Besides… you’re alone. No one should have to exist alone.”

I went to the driver’s side of Earl and stepped into the cab. Lark had just slid through the door. 

I smiled to her as I went to start the truck. 

“It’s--!” she went to say quickly and the vehicle lurched forward and stalled out.

“In first…” she finished and laughed.

I set my forehead against the steering wheel. 

 

There was nothing to stop us. We could drive all night. She was a ghost, and I was an angel, and Earl never ran out of gas. 

Lark was less reserved as a spirit. She sang her favorite songs on the radio and danced to them. There was nothing that could hurt her. No one could get to her body. The most that could happen was someone striking her through with iron, and then that was only temporary.

I pulled over one morning as the sun broke the horizon and I stepped out of the truck. In silence, Lark joined me. I was bored of driving for nearly three days in a row, and sunrise was an excuse to get out, stretch, and admire my father’s handiwork.

“I just realized something,” Lark said softly.

“Hm?” I asked softly.

“Do we even know where we’re driving to?” she asked.

I glanced to her to see her staring at me. 

“Well, hell, Gabe, I knew you enjoyed my company, but this is ridiculous,” she chuckled.

“I’m driving to Wren’s house,” I reminded her.

“How far off are we?” she asked.

“If we drive now, we should be there by evening.”

“Your call, Captain,” she replied.

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something wrong with her. Something was bothering Lark, and while I was certain it had to do with the Stronghold, I could only assume it involved those moments in her story she had skipped over when telling me. 

We got back in the truck and continued on through the morning. There was no need to eat, no need for bathroom breaks. The Winchesters wished they were so lucky.

 

The entrance to the Carmody ranch was still a long stretch of road lined by trees. I pulled the truck to a stop just outside the fence, on the side of the road.

Lark was leaning forward in the passenger’s seat, staring out ahead of us. “Looks like someone still lives here,” she said softly.

She seemed nervous as she leaned forward on the dash. I put the truck in gear and turned onto that long road. 

That night in the past, it had been difficult to see the green of the fields. There were now horses that ran on one side of the road, and cattle that grazed on the other. 

As we neared the ranch house, there was a tractor in front of the barn that roared to life. Then it sputtered and stalled.

All movement came to a halt as I drove that old truck up to the front of the house and parked. I stepped out and a man called from the top of the tractor, “You lost, Sir?”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. I glanced behind me to see Lark still in the cab.

The man lowered himself from the machine and approached me. “What can I help you with?” he asked.

I decided for the safer route. “I’m looking for a family that used to live here,” I replied passively.

“Same family’s lived here since the dawn of time,” he joked. 

“Well, then,” I replied, “I’m looking for the Carmody Matriarch.”

I saw him move quickly, but I didn’t think much of it. He splashed me in the face with the water from a bottle in his hands and then frowned. 

I heard Lark laughing behind me as I wiped my face.

“Protocol,” he said.

“Well aware,” I told him.

“You a hunter?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But I’m here to ask about a friend who is.”

The man frowned a little deeper. “Is what?” he asked.

“A hunter,” I said. I was starting to think he was just there to be confusing. 

“That hunter have a name?” he asked.

My patience was wearing thin. I glanced behind me to see Lark leaning on the door, waiting for my answer.

“Not mine to give,” I said shortly. 

“No name, no cooperation,” he shrugged.

“Just tell him Danica,” Lark told me. “I think he’s just the messenger… the Carmody doorman.”

I smirked at the thought. This man couldn’t see her behind me, he couldn’t hear her at all, and that was an advantage as long as it didn’t look like I was talking to myself. 

“Danica,” I said. “Her name is Danica.”

“And yours?” he asked.

I couldn’t keep telling people my name was Gabe. Especially since Wren had known I was an angel. I said, “John,” instead. There were plenty of Johns in the world. It was like Li on the other side of the planet.

“Wait here,” he told me and went up to the porch and through the front door.

With him gone, I turned back toward the truck and approached Lark. “Where’d you pick up the name Danica from?” I asked.

“Danica Patrick?” she said.

“The driver?” 

She shrugged. She had heard the name but didn’t know where from. It didn’t really matter either way. It was just another identity she assumed.

I leaned on the door and she moved back. “I don’t really get why we’re here,” she said softly. “We were going to come to the Carmodys for help with the bond. But that was when I was alive.”

“I liked you better when you were alive,” I muttered. 

“You were tied to a human when I was alive,” she grumbled back.

“I don’t like your body being stranded in the Stronghold,” I told her.

“It’s just a body, Gabe. Besides, it’s all turned to stone now.” Her tone changed as she said, “I am one with the fortress!” She sounded like a terrible superhero. Early, corny Batman.

I heard the spring on the screen door open and I glanced back to see the man who had been on the tractor holding the door open for an elderly woman. 

She appeared frail, but she walked upright and she held a faded red shawl around her tanned shoulders. At the top of the stairs she looked back at me with a wrinkled face, her hair white as snow, and she held out her hand to me. 

There was no resemblance between this woman and Lark. Lark was fair of skin, had the piercing blue eyes of the Colt family, and the same red hair as her mother. The woman before me had naturally browned skin. As I neared her, I noticed her eyes were clouded over. Cataracts. She was completely blind. And yet she knew exactly where I was.

I offered her my hand, and before the flesh of my vessel touched her, she pulled away from me. “What are you?” she asked.

I felt a surge of power rise around me, it wasn’t just her. They could do nothing to me, they weren’t strong enough, but they were quite powerful.

“What the hell?” Lark shouted. I glanced behind me to see her pass through her truck door. I wanted to tell her to stay back, I didn’t know what they were trying to do, but it would’ve drawn attention to her.

She came to stand beside me and said, “Obviously not as friendly as some other Carmodys. Can we go now?”

The power I felt suddenly subsided.

“Who is she?” the blind woman asked.

The man beside her looked around, confused. He looked how I had recently felt. “There’s no one.”

She seemed to sigh with exasperation. I wasn’t the only one who thought he was a little worthless. 

“Don’t say anything,” Lark said. Her spirit appeared tense. I wasn’t going to say anything anyway. There was nothing these people could do to me. 

“There is Carmody blood,” the woman said softly.

I scoffed. “No there isn’t.” Technically, there wasn’t any Carmody blood around. If she was sensing Lark, it was a soul she felt. 

She held her hand out to Lark and looked directly where she stood beside me. She was using her magic to see. She couldn’t hear Lark, but she certainly knew she was there. That she was nearby.

“Don’t be afraid,” the woman said. “We do not harm family.”

“Yeah, sure,” Lark muttered. 

Lowering her hand to her side, she asked, “What family are you from?”

“Carmody, duh!” Lark spat back.

I laughed. When I noticed the messenger-man staring at me, I coughed and silenced myself, but I couldn’t keep the smirk off of my face.

“My name,” the old woman began, “is Eliana Baza Carmody. I am the current matriarch of Carmody, but I am also the matriarch of Baza.”

“What the hell’s a baza? I thought they were supposed to be bird names,” Lark muttered.

“A baza is a bird,” I told her.

“What kind of bird?”

“Hawk,” I replied. “Usually found in southern Asia and Africa.”

“She looks Mexican.”

“Lark!” 

“What?” She looked back at me completely unabashed.

And then the older woman chuckled and said, “Ah, a Skylark.”

I mentally reprimanded myself. 

“Very nice,” Lark sighed. 

“Skylarks are so full of fire, aren’t they?” Eliana replied with a smile. 

I wasn’t sure if she had picked up on something in either the way I spoke or the way I moved, but she seemed to know what was going on. Or perhaps, I was thinking too much.

“There is a story,” the old woman began, “about a lost Carmody. For years, we’ve waited for her to come home. And today is that day. But, she no longer has a physical form, does she, John?”

The way she said my name. She said it as if she didn’t believe it was my name for one second. She also seemed to be saying that it was my fault. 

“You know,” Lark said beside me, “you keep getting that guilty-look on your face and it’s going to get stuck there.”

I couldn’t help but smile. Death had changed her. That much I could see. She wasn’t afraid to speak. She wasn’t afraid to tell me what she thought. 

“Why don’t the two of you come inside?” the matriarch suggested. “We can sit down and talk about this.”

Lark stepped back, away from all of us. “I’m not going in there,” she said.

This I didn’t understand. Her aversion to the Carmodys. 

I looked to her, to where she now stood and her fists were clenched tight. “What is it?” I asked.

The tension left her face. She was a very serious ghost. “I don’t know what’s in there,” she replied softly. “Wren had devil’s traps in her car. What could they have? They could hurt us, Gabe.”

I stared at her. They could hurt us. Us. I wanted to hold her then. I wanted to tell her there was nothing they could do to me. And I wouldn’t let them do anything to her. 

Instead, I looked to the Carmody Matriarch and replied, “We’d much rather stay outside. If you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” Eliana told me. 

The messenger at her side, the man whom had been on the tractor, left her then. 

“Is she…” Eliana began softly, “the daughter of Wren Carmody?”

Lark frowned. “She knows exactly who I am… Don’t buy into her crap.”

“Easy,” I said softly. “You’re going to turn into a vengeful spirit if you keep that up.”

There were no sleeves for a spirit to wear her emotions on. With Lark, they seemed to come and go so quickly, unchecked. If she felt it, she displayed it. This was how Lark felt. For the first time I could see it. And I knew it wasn’t a spell. I wasn’t completely unaware of which emotions were hers and which were mine. She felt and she simply was. 

What I understood then was not reassuring. While there was no bond between us anymore, nothing that tied her to me and me to her, I cared for her. And most of all, Lark cared for me. She cared about us.

Chairs were brought out, along with a portable canopy, and it was set up near Lark’s truck. Lark stood back and watched them with caution. “They’re trying to gain our trust,” she told me.

Of course they were. This was the way mankind had tried to make friends out of dangerous creatures for thousands of years. Play by their rules. Lark had played by Crowley’s rules, and he had let her escape his tortures. I doubted the Carmodys would be anything like Crowley, though. 

I took a seat beneath the canopy, across from Eliana. Lark stood behind me, even though they had brought her a chair that sat empty at my left. 

“How long have you known this Skylark?” the matriarch asked me. 

“Not very long,” was my reply, though I was certain it had felt like an eternity for Lark. 

“I had been told she was traveling with a man by another name,” Eliana said. “Did you know her before she died?”

Lark said, “Say no.”

“No,” I replied. “I met the ghost.”

Eliana appeared saddened. “Then he must have died,” she told me. “Perhaps that is why you met her as a ghost…”

“Play dumb,” Lark said.

“I don’t understand,” I replied to the matriarch.

“The daughter of Wren Carmody, the lost Carmody child,” Eliana said, “was blood-bound to a man. If she is dead, then it is safe to assume that he is as well.”

Lark chuckled, “It’s never that simple…”

“What I don’t understand,” the matriarch continued, “is that if she has returned as a spirit, where is he? The spell I was informed of should have bound them together in the afterlife.

“What?” Lark and I said in unison.

“What is holding her here?” Eliana asked.

Lark smirked. “See if she can make sense of the Stronghold,” she said. Her tone was bitter.

I started by saying, “Her body is technically still alive, but the place where it’s at…”

I had let my words trail off, but Eliana sat up straight in her seat. “The Void,” she said softly, her voice breathy.

“The Void?” I asked.

“When Wren Carmody returned to us,” she said and I felt a jolt of power.

Lark’s hand settled on my shoulder, almost as if she were squeezing. Her soul was raw power and it rushed through me. The muscles in my vessel tightened. My stomach clenched. 

I was breathing harder. It was euphoria. 

I had to get it under control. The hairs along my arms were standing on end. “Lark…?” I said softly and she stepped back, removing her hands from my body. 

The rush was gone. I took a deep breath and felt myself settle within my vessel. My insides shivered. 

“Why didn’t Wren Carmody die inside the Stronghold?” Lark asked, her voice breaking.

I repeated her question.

Eliana shook her head. “Wren was to ascend to the Skylark Matriarch, and then the Matriarch of Carmody, before me. She said very few things about the Void. And then suddenly, she died.”

Finally, Lark sat on the chair beside me. Or as much as she could sit. It was a human-habit for a disembodied soul. 

“She left a journal,” Eliana said, “but the magic she placed upon it, when it is opened, there are no words. There aren’t even any pages. It’s Skylark magic. Meant for Skylarks.”

“This shit is getting ridiculous,” Lark grumbled.

“My thoughts exactly,” I sighed.

“If your Skylark,” Eliana continued as if I hadn’t said anything, “had her body, perhaps she’d be able to read it.”

“Where are the other Skylarks?” I asked, “Can’t they read it?”

Eliana sadly shook her head. “Those that have tried have all received a different message.”

“Mischief managed,” I muttered. 

“At least I’m not the last Skylark,” Lark said.

“You can’t be the last of everything,” I said with a smirk.

“You’re the one that acts like I’m important,” she returned.

I glanced over to her to see her copying my expression. Quiet humor. 

“Then how do we know Wren Carmody left any answers?” I asked the matriarch.

“The last Carmody Matriarch handed this to me when I took over. After the death of her own daughter, the responsibility of the family was just too much to bear…” the matriarch held out her hand to me and in it was an envelope. It had been battered and worn through the years and as I took it from her, the paper felt soft between my fingers.

“Please, read,” she told me.

I opened the envelope and inside was a note. Just one folded sheet of paper. It was written in a flowing, cursive hand.

I glanced to my left to see Lark leaning towards me. “What’s it say?” she asked.

I had forgotten she could read very little… if much at all. 

I must have looked silly being self conscious of what a blind woman would think of me turning a piece of paper towards a ghost that could not be seen by anyone but myself. The tractor-man had settled off elsewhere. 

“Dearest Matriarch,” I began to read, “As it seems, the world is always much more complex than we imagine. I will be unable to take my place as the matriarch of the family. I have lost my daughter to darkness, and I refuse to have another child when I could not protect the one I left behind. And while she will not grow as a Carmody, and care the way we care for one another, I am certain that one day she will have kindness worth saving. 

“One day, when she shows up at our home with her dear friend, I hope we do everything we can to help her. I tried to leave my book for her in that dark place, but I know it will be destroyed. And so I will leave a book for my child when she finally comes home. 

“In the meantime, I ask that the family concentrate on finding a way to reverse a third-tier blood-bond, for reasons that will one day come to light. Signed, Wren Skylark.  
At the bottom of the page was a feather made of fire. It glowed as if it lived.

“What’s that?” Lark asked.

“What is this feather?” I asked of the Carmody Matriarch.

“Heron is the water. Shikra the earth, Skylark the fire, Baza the wind, and Bluejay is the bones of humanity,” she replied.

“That’s a frightening riddle, I hope,” Lark muttered.

“Each family is represented by an element of life,” Eliana said. “Only together can we fly.”

Lark snickered. 

“What?” I asked her.

“Sounds like a commercial,” she replied. Then she mockingly said, “Together we can change the world.”

I bit my cheek to keep the smile off of my face. Not that it mattered.

“So she’s saying,” Lark sighed, “if I want to know what my mother wrote to me, I need to get a body?”

“She’ll need a body to see what’s in that book Wren Carmody left?” I asked the matriarch.

Eliana nodded. “Yes,” she said. “The magic is in our blood. It will react to her hands.”

“That’s that then,” Lark sighed. “Time to go.”

“Go?” I asked.

“I have no body,” she said simply, “there’s nothing we can do.” She didn’t even seem excited. If it couldn’t be done, it couldn’t be done, and she was ready to move on.

“Wait a minute,” I said to her and rose to my feet as she walked away.

“Either you can come with me, Gabe,” she said, “Or I’ll go on my own, but there’s nothing left to do here.”

“But where are you going?” I asked.

She shrugged and kept walking. This was Lark trying not to be interested. I wanted to believe that she cared nothing about what her mother may or may not have written to her. 

And then it clicked in my head. “Arlene!” I called to her.

She rounded on me, completely confused. “What?” she asked.

“Arlene. Genetically, she’s you,” I said. It was true. Shapeshifters changed to their host right down to the most personal strands of their DNA. 

“Arlene?” she asked. “Wait… I thought…”

I had told her the person looked nothing like her. I had told her that the people we had run into were only mistaking her for someone that looked nothing like her. 

“The shapeshifter?” Lark questioned sharply. 

“It’s a long story…” I said.

“So there’s a zombie shapeshifter out there running around with my face?” she nearly shouted.

“Her brother was killed that day, Lark, not her,” I tried to explain.

Her tone changed. I would have preferred her yelling at me. She said quietly, “So there is a shapeshifter out there, with my face, who I hunted as a child. You want her to help me read a book? Let it go, Gabriel.”

“What’s the harm in asking?” I suggested.

She stalked up to me then and stood inches away, staring up at me with those Colt-blue eyes. “It’s what you want,” she said. “This isn’t what I want.”

Right before my eyes, she vanished. 

I called out to her. 

Eliana sighed.

I sat back down across from the matriarch, and she looked to me without truly seeing me. “She does not want to live,” she said softly.

I shook my head, realized she couldn’t see it, and responded, “No… I think she’s afraid.”

“None can blame her for that,” she replied with a wizened voice. “When Wren returned to us, she was a shell of the woman she had once been. There was no love in her, only that darkness that told her she should have been dead.”

“You saw her?” I asked and quickly tried to correct my wording, “I mean…”

She smiled. “I did see her,” she said softly. “I lost my sight shortly after her death. As did several others.”

I could have healed her, I thought, but that would reveal my own powers, which I was sure she already had some idea of. 

“Anyway,” she began again. “That night when Wren returned, she had scars all over. She seemed to have been well fed, but she was dirty. Her hair was in knots, her fingernails were chipped and broken. For weeks, she said nothing, only watched everyone as if we were going to attack her. She retreated from loud noises. She hid in her room. She even kept her beloved Paul Harvelle at a distance.”

I had forgotten all about Paul Harvelle. He wasn’t as important as Wren.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

Eliana shook her head. “When Wren died, he came to the funeral. And then he never came back,” she said.

She took a moment, as if considering her next words, and she said, “You understand, if you push that Skylark too hard, she will lash out at you.”

I sat still. She wasn’t asking me if I knew, she was warning me. Was this a trait of the Skylarks? Had Wren done such things, too? Either way, I knew I had to find Lark.


End file.
